Before and After
by Moxie
Summary: Starts at the happy beginning of graduation... and then spirals down into the future. What could happen, if DeathDay comes too soon?
1. The Beginning of the End

__

Welcome, my friends, to the Beginning of the End.

Our partings fill with sorrow,

through hot and cold, thick and thin,

may I see your face tomorrow.

# # #

Harry Potter shoved the last things into his trunk and looked around the stone and scarlet room, stripped of all of it's posters and items that had made it his home for the past seven years. It looked lonely and forlorn now; a mere skeleton of what it used to be. Seven beds stood silent, and empty, waiting for the next class to come and fill them again next year.

Tossing his black hair out of his eyes, he tried to push it onto his cart. Even though he had grown taller from the overly inquisitive, underfed boy who had come here seven years ago, several things still hadn't changed, like his lack of muscularity. After nearly a quarter of an hour of intense struggle, there was a shuffle to the left of him, and the trunk seemed to become a lot lighter.

# # #

__

The good times we had,

the laughs we shared,

the pranks we pulled, 

the rules we spared.

# # #

Unsurprisingly, it was Ron, who gave a grunt and hoisted the heavy trunk on the cart with ease. Harry snorted and strapped the case down on the cart, before whistling for Hedwig.

Ron had changed a lot too, from the tall, thin gangly preteen to who he was now. Ron had widened up a bit, but his feet were still about three times taller than were fit for his body. If the rest of him grew to match his feet, Ron would end up a man of splendid proportions.

"You ready? They're holding up the Express for you," Ron said, helping strap down the trunk while Harry got Hedwig in the cage. 

When Harry heard that, his cheeks nearly went redder than Ron's shock of red hair. "Why didn't somebody come and get me?" he asked indignantly.

Ron finished tying down the trunk and gave the top of it a hefty thump; his personal stamp of finishing up.

"Somebody did come and get you. That somebody was me. Now hurry up," Ron demanded, grabbing Hedwig's cage. "I'll carry this."

Harry sighed and pushed the cart out of the Gryffindor locker room. The Fat Lady waved goodbye as the portrait swung shut behind them.

# # #

__

May I remember your face,

be you friend or foe,

so your features I can remember,

and your legacy I know.

# # #

The Hogwarts express was just the way that Harry had ridden it years before, except for one major difference. This time it would take him to the muggle world, and it wouldn't take him back to his magical school.

"Here's the compartment that Hermione saved for us," Ron said, helping Harry drag the heavy loaded trunk up the stairs.

Shoving the trunk in the corner, Harry looked around until he found the beaming young lady who was swinging her hands over her head ecstatically, trying to get their attention.

Hermione had also changed quite a bit from the book-bound, buck-toothed, bossy girl that Harry and Ron met on the train. Her teeth hadn't been bucked since fifth year, when her parents finally bossed her into getting braces. She was slim, but by no means fragile and delicate.

"Took you long enough," Hermione groaned, moving over to give the two boys room to squish onto the bench with her.

# # #

__

Will you remember me?

O friends I adore,

will we age and be together?

Or will we perish on separate shores?

# # #

The train started, slowly chugging into the grainy, squeaky sounds of train movement. The rusted joints of the wheels groaned and complained with long stiffness as they started to turn. After about five minutes of jolty movement, the train finally swung into steady rhythm as the wheels clickety-clacked along the rails.

Harry leaned his head on the cool window and watched the quickly disappearing silhouette of Hogwarts melt away. It was a very overcast day, the kind where the smell of wet is in the air, and you can almost feel the droplets of water, but the clouds just kind of held it in. Harry thought that if God was trying to add to this already depressing day, He was doing a good job at it. The least it could have been was sunny, he thought.

When his breath had fogged up the windowpane enough, and his eyes were tired of straining to catch final glimpses of the castle, he turned back inside. Hermione and Ron were inspecting their wands, as if they had just gotten them.

"No letter to tell parents we aren't to use magic over the summer," Ron breathed. He looked over at Harry and Hermione. "We're fully trained wizards now."

Hermione shook her head. "Seven whole years. Wow."

Harry didn't respond. Instead, he opted to give Hedwig some attention. Sticking his fingers between the bars of the cage, he cooed softly to her. Hedwig, who didn't like train rides, nipped at one of his fingers in reproach.

Seeing what Harry was doing, Ron looked over at his own owl, Snip, who was sleeping peacefully in the safety of his cage.

"Snip likes train rides," he crooned, smiling over at the sleeping owl. Hermione rolled her eyes as she stroked Crookshanks in her lap.

"You two are acting like a pair of nuts," she scolded softly, as Crookshanks purred like a drill in her lap.

"Right, Hermione," Harry sighed. "Like you don't do the same thing with that crazy cat."

Hermione was about to reply, but was interrupted by a loud snore, courtesy of Ron. That made the topic of conversation change as she and Harry shared a giggle, before Hermione yawned.

Covering her mouth with her hand, she leaned back in her seat. "Ron has an idea," she mumbled sleepily. Yawning again, she settled back and was soon asleep. Crookshanks kneaded her stomach lazily before turning around a few times and curling back up.

Harry snorted in a bit of contempt. Here it was, the last few hours they were going to be together for who knows when, and everybody was sleeping.

About a half-hour later, Harry had to admit that Hermione and Ron had a good point. The soothing rocking of the train seemed to be trying to lull him to sleep. What was worse was that most of his compartment was already asleep, save a few individuals who, like him, were nearly asleep anyway.

Finally, the warm air, the steady chorus of soft snores and the gentle hum of the train locomotive were too much. Harry was asleep.

# # #

__

If we must part now,

your hopes and dreams may Fate defend,

but one answer I must have,

is this really the Beginning of the End?

# # # 

A faint jolt of movement brought Harry out of his deep slumber slightly, and then the air seemed unusually still. Forgetting where he was, Harry rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. A hand shot out and shook his shoulder roughly.

Feeling groggy, Harry sat up and looked about him confusedly. Hermione and Ron were grabbing their carry on bags, and rising out of their seats. Hermione's hand swung out to shake Harry again, but she turned around and saw that he was up.

"Finally! Hurry up. We're back," she ordered brusquely. Harry stood up, still feeling slightly dazed. They couldn't be back so soon! It was too early! There was no way that he had slept for so long. 

Filling out into the crowded halls, Harry, Hermione and Ron managed to mush their way out of the cluster of people in the train. Swinging over to the left, they tried to find a place to talk that was out of the way. Harry was preoccupied, and therefore not watching what he was doing. He ran slapbang into someone unwittingly.

"Watch where you're going, Potter!" an icily familiar voice snapped.

"Bite his head off, Malfoy, it was an accident!" Ron spat back.

Harry looked up at his long-time foe. He had actually changed a whole lot from the sneering, calculating person he was when they had met at the robe shop seven years ago. Well, he was still sneering and calculating, but he was now a very tall, sneering, calculating person. Hitting a major growth spurt in his sixth year, he now towered over even Ron. He had widened a tad, although not much and he still had the appearance of a sharp, skinny knife.

Malfoy rolled his eyes in the back of his head. Along with sneering, that was another thing he had gotten really good at lately. Grabbing his cart, he gave a shove the other way and stalked off.

# # #

****

Dreamers, worshipers, lovers, wishers,

sinners alike.

Without warning or heed,

I can strike.

# # #

Muttering dark things, Ron followed Hermione and Harry to a section near a wall that didn't appear to be being used.

They just stood there, staring silently at each other for a few moments, before Hermione spoke.

"I suppose that this is it," she said shakily. Ron nodded, before looking around.

"Any ideas on what you're going to do for a job?" he asked.

Harry shrugged, and nodded to Hermione. "You first."

"I had always envisioned being the first Mistress of Magic," she said, seemingly gazing off into the future.

"A teaching position at Hogwarts sounds intriguing," Ron said finally after another pause. Harry had to grin at that one.

"You? A professor? You'd have to work with Snape," Harry cautioned. Ron grinned.

"That's why I'm going to go out for the Potions job. I can run him outta there. Anyway, what about you, Harry?" 

Harry shrugged again. "I suppose whatever Fate deals me," he said mysteriously. Hermione rolled her eyes.

# # #

****

Colors, race, religion, place in society,

too late many of you find,

poor, rich, educated, dumb,

that to who you are, I am blind.

# # #

"You're starting to sound like Professor Trelawney," she said disdainfully.

"We'll have to figure out a way to let your horrible relatives let you come to my house over the summer. I doubt that they would care," Ron said, changing the subject.

"I suppose," Harry said, feeling disconnected.

There was more awkward silence. The trio watched as the man regulated how many wizards and witches were allowed to go through the barrier at once. It was always the same. Two by two, two by two.

"It's so odd," Hermione said in that odd soft voice again, "we won't be coming back next year. I don't even know what I want to do with my life yet."

Harry knew that Hermione was almost to the point of breaking down into tears, so he sighed and put a friendly arm around her shoulders. They made their way into the line, and slowly started waddling towards the front in it, in the silence of their own minds again.

The man scowled at them, but let Harry and Hermione walk through the barrier together. Hannah Abbot and Ron followed them.

Harry quickly spotted the bright mass of red hair that signaled Ron's family, and then saw the Granger family standing there quietly. He then saw the Dursleys, standing as far away from them as humanly possible. Harry sighed again.

# # #

****

Dreamers dream,

worshipers pray,

sinners scorn,

lovers play.

# # #

"Boy, hurry up!" Vernon Dursley barked. Walking over to the Weasley family, he was showered in slaps on the back from Fred and George, a stately handshake from Percy, a hug and a light peck on the cheek from Mrs. Weasley, and a gruff wink from Mr. Weasley. Ginny even got up the nerve to run up, throw her arms around Harry's waist, and retreat back behind her father.

"So, how does it feel to be a wizard?" Percy asked. Hermione smiled wanly.

"The same as it felt before I was a witch, I suppose," she whispered.

Vernon Dursley started yelling angry obscenities at Harry, and he sighed.

"I got to go," he said quickly. Ron smiled, but seemed to blink too much, and his arms were wobbling ever so slightly. Hermione was on the brink of tears, but seemed to be holding on to herself by a thread.

"Bye Ron, I'll send you an owl," Harry said, reaching out for a handshake. Ron took it and grasped it firmly, before answering.

"We'll be looking forward to having you over for awhile," he said chokingly. Harry smiled, and turned to Hermione.

"Goodbye, Hermione. Hopefully I'll see you this summer too," he said before bending over to give her a short hug.

Hermione couldn't speak over the lump in her throat, so she just nodded. Harry waved one last time, before wheeling his cart around to face the Dursleys.

"Why didn't you stay all day?" Petunia snapped. Harry thought it best not to answer that, as he loaded his trunk in the back of the car.

He sat down in the car, and Dudley sat down next to him. The car literally tipped over to the side because of his girth. Dudley had gained about one hundred pounds over the year, and was huge.

Harry just stared out the window as the muggle world scooted by, feeling very empty. Vernon was talking loudly to his wife about the recent success the drill company had had. Harry saw no point in contributing to this conversation, so he didn't.

Pretty soon the car revved up the driveway on Privet Drive, house number four. The three Dursleys climbed out the door and into the house, leaving Harry to struggle with the heavy trunk himself.

Upon entering the house, he was instantly jumped on by Vernon Dursley. He stuck his fat purple face into Harry's, and started to speak in a deadly whisper.

"Listen, boy. You're a fully trained wizard now, and we don't need you in here eating our food, and doing your....odd....voodoo rituals. You have one month to clear out." With that, he turned on his heels and stormed off into the kitchen.

Harry couldn't believe what he had just heard. He was being thrown out! He didn't know whether to fall over in shock or jump for joy. But where was he going to go? He was a new recruit, just out of school. Maybe the Weasley's would let him stay for awhile at their place. It was already so crowded there, though, and he felt bad asking.

His head felt muddled, and Harry thought that he was going to be sick all over the place. Dinner was set on the table, but he didn't feel like eating. Instead, he dragged his trunk up the stairs to his room.

His room was the same since he had gotten it seven years ago. Plain white, and crammed with Dudley's old playthings. Since Dudley had now deemed himself too old for toys, Harry had to push away several knick-knacks off of his bed so he could flop on it.

Since he had already slept so much that day, Harry wasn't so sure if he could sleep anymore. But Harry and sleep soon found each other, and Harry was out for the rest of the day.

# # #

****

And so, my mortal pawn,

your game of chess has yet to begin.

In response to the earlier query,

yes, this is the Beginning of the End.

# # #

A/N: ::cough:: Cornball fic! ::coughs again:: Cornball fic! ::buries head in hands:: This is what happens to me when I don't get enough sleep. I try to take a break from writing, but noooo, my muse has to attack me in the middle of the night... Well, if you like the sound of this, this could be the beginning of a very long series. (No, the rest of the series has almost NOTHING to do with this, i.e. it's not fluffy at ALL.) To clear up any confusion, the part of the poem that runs through this fic that is in Italics is spoken by a person called 'The Avid Dreamer'. The part that is in bold is told by 'Fate'. Yes, I wrote it. Yes, I know I have no life to speak of. ::hears lots of groans, and moans like 'Moxie's at the poetry again':: Shadup! This is actually an old poem I wrote a long time ago. I read it over, and it just fit. Enjoy the semi-fluff of this fic. If I write more, it won't stay fluffy for long.... *evil grin*

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: No character in this fic belongs to me. The only thing that does in the plot, and the poem, I think....


	2. Twists of Fate

A/N: This chapter is going to be kind of confusing, because it's not written in the 'normal' dialogue. Just, work with me here. Time is a very important factor in this chapter... and I measured time to the copyright date on the first book, which is 1997. So, in this fic, Harry's first year at Hogwarts was 1997. If that's wrong, don't kill me, please! Enough with my excuses. On with the story!

# # #

****

Letter from Harry Potter to Ron Weasley, June 17, 2004.

Ron-

You wouldn't believe what just happened. Yesterday, when I came after I got back from the station, Uncle Vernon told me that I had a month to clear out of his house before he kicked me out. Would it be rude on my part to accept that invitation to your house a bit early? It wouldn't be for that long, maybe for the summer or so, until I can get a job somewhere. I can stay here for about a month longer, so take your time replying.

-Harry

****

Conversation at the Weasley's dinner table, June 19, 2004.

Mr. Weasley: ...Then he had the audacity to say that he had the authority to take away my job! All I did was take apart a microwave, and they went biserk!

Mrs. Weasley: Well, I can't say I didn't expect you to get caught sooner or later.

Mr. Weasley: Just whose side are you on, anyway?!

Ron: Mom? Dad?

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley: What?!

Ron: Would it be too much trouble to invite Harry over for the rest of the summer?

Ginny: Harry? What does he want over here?

Ron: His aunt and uncle said that he had a month to clear out of the house, before they kicked him out.

Mrs. Weasley: You're joking! Muggles can be so rude. And such a dear boy, too. Yes, of course you may invite him over.

Mr. Weasley: Tell him to come over in a month. I'm going to be doing some research, and this house will be very crowded and dirty. Your mother is going to have a fit.

Ron: Thanks, Mum and Dad.

****

Conversation between Lucius and Draco Malfoy, June 19, 2004

Mr. Malfoy: So, how was the school year, Son?

Draco: Just fine, Father. Long and boring as normal.

Mr. Malfoy: That's good. Why don't you go upstairs? I'll call you when dinner is ready.

Draco: Yes, Father.

Voice: Is your son gone?

Mr. Malfoy: Yes, my liege.

Voice: Good. And you're positive that Harry Potter has left Hogwarts for good?

Mr. Malfoy: He was in the same year as my son. I'm positive.

Voice: For your own sake, I hope you're right.

Mr. Malfoy: I'm positive, my lord. Positive.

****

Conversation at the Dursley's dinner table, June 19, 2004.

Mr. Dursley: About time you showed up.

Harry: Sorry, Uncle Vernon. I was writing a letter.

Mrs. Dursley: You're not writing to those friends of....your kind, are you?!

Harry: N-n-no...

Dudley: Harry's gettin' in trouble...Harry's gettin' in trouble....

Harry: Shut up, Dudley. I was writing to an apartment complex. I'm looking into an apartment to rent.

Dudley: Harry told me to shut up!

Mr. Dursley: Shut up, then. I'm glad you got some of the common sense from my side of the family, boy. I don't want to see your ruddy face around here ever again.

Harry: Only a month longer....one more month...

Mrs. Dursley: What did you say?

Harry: Nothing...nothing...

****

Conversation at the Ministry of Magic, June 20, 2004.

Mr. Gray: Fudge, you have to listen to me! You-Know-Who is on the rise again!

Mr. Fudge: Look, Cadron. I told you once, if I told you a thousand times! I can't go on these vague allegations. You have to have proof. Do you have any proof?

Mr. Gray: Only my gut feeling. And I tell you, Cornilius, my gut doesn't lie.

Mr. Malfoy: This is preposterous! Fudge, you can't be taking this old crackpot seriously, can you? The Dark Lord is off somewhere in Albania, half-dead! He has no powers, and a certain... Harry Potter is a fully trained wizard. Do you actually think that Vold-... You-Know-Who could rise again, even if he tried?!

Mr. Weasley: You should take his word for it, Fudge. Lucius would know more about the Dark Lord than everybody else. Considering that he was in his inner circle....

Mr. Malfoy: I never! You couldn't prove that in a million years, Weasley!

Mr. Weasley: That doesn't mean that you didn't, Malfoy. One of these days, the truth will come out, and don't expect any mercy from me.

Mr. Fudge: Enough! Mr. Weasley, back to your office, same with you, Lucius. Cadron, you have no proof about You-Know-Who other than your gut feeling, and gut feelings don't count as evidence! Now, ladies and gentlemen, please, can we get back to more important matters?!

****

Letter from Ron Weasley to Harry Potter, June 20, 2004.

Harry-

Mom and Dad said that you could come over when your month at the Dursley's is up. Sorry, I would invite you earlier, but Dad is doing this research thing, and the house will be crowded enough. Bring all of your stuff with you. Well, obviously, since you probably wouldn't be coming back to your aunt's house. Dad came back in a really bad mood today from the Ministry, muttering something about how he'd like to wring Lucius Malfoy's neck. Mom and Percy were outraged by his behavior. You can imagine their reaction when Fred and George asked Dad if he would like some help in doing so!

-Ron

****

Exert from a letter, from Cornilius Fudge to Albus Dumbledore, July 1, 2004.

...A most upsetting thing has been bothering me lately, Albus. Nearly everyday, old Mr. Gray of the Treasury Department comes to me with the same message. He claims that the Dark Lord is coming back. Just for curiosity's sake, I looked up his records. It did say that in school, he was training to be a Seer, but that was before he took a strong attachment to numbers. That means that he must have some Inner Eye, right? The oddest thing is that Gray never bothers to tell me this in secret, he tells it to the entire Ministry! Most of the men scoff, and tell me that he's probably gone off of his rocker from age, but I'm not so sure. Help me Albus! Once again, I have no idea what to do.

On a lighter note, Gringotts has had exceptional inspections lately...

****

Conversation between Vernon Dursley and Harry Potter, July 18, 2004.

Harry: Umm, Uncle Vernon?

Mr. Dursley: Eh?

Harry: I'll be leaving within the next two weeks.

Mr. Dursley: Leaving? Oh, that's right. Good riddance, then.

Harry: I'm going to pack now.

Mr. Dursley: Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

****

A radio broadcast from WIZ, the Wiz, July 20, 2004.

Wendy Walyla: That was 'Wizardly Wonderful', by Selena Warbeck. You're listening to WIZ, the Wiz! And now, for news with Jim Jayne!

Jim Jayne: Thank you Wendy. Actually, some disturbing news tonight.

Wendy Walyla: Oh no. Has Cornilius Fudge lost his toothpicks again?

Jim Jayne: No....

Wendy Walyla: Have the muggles found out about us yet?

Jim Jayne: No...

Wendy Walyla: Has...

Jim Jayne: WENDY!!

Wendy Walyla: Oh. Sorry Jim. Carry on.

Jim Jayne: Thank you. As I was _saying_, some Seers have been seeing some terrible things in their crystal balls lately.

Wendy Walyla: Uh-oh.

Jim Jayne: Yes, it's been said that the Dark Lord is going to make a comeback, and take over wizard-kind. The Seers say that they have adequate proof that this is going to happen, as the bad vibes in the air are continuing to worsen, and the visions are becoming more frequent. Us dedicated newsfolk at the Wiz will keep you informed as the situation unfolds. Wendy?

Wendy Walyla: Thank you, Jim. The Wiz will be right back, after a word from our sponsors!

Announcer: Do you have troubles getting the fingerprints off of your crystal balls? Well, worry no more, because it's Slip'n'Shine to the rescue......

Wendy Walyla: You don't actually believe in all of that crystal ball Seeing and junk, do you?

Jim Jayne: Not really, Wendy. I took Divination when I was in Hogwarts. I didn't see any truth in it. I don't think we have anything to worry about at all.

****

Conversation between Sibyll Trelawney and Albus Dumbledore, July 31, 2004.

Professor Trelawney: Albus! Albus!

Professor Dumbledore: Good Heavens, Sybill! What's the matter?

Professor Trelawney: The wizarding - no, the entire world - is in great peril!

Professor Dumbledore: Oh. So I see.

Professor Trelawney: You're mocking me, Albus.

Professor Dumbledore: I most certainly am not.

Professor Trelawney: Yes, you are.

Professor Dumbledore: Well, you have to admit, you busting in here unexpectedly and telling me that the world is going to end isn't exactly easy to swallow, now is it?

Professor Trelawney: Have I ever steered anybody wrong?

Professor Dumbledore: Sybill, you predict the death of a student every year, and there has yet to see one die.

Professor Trelawney: Just hear me out.

Professor Dumbledore: That's what I'm here for. Go on.

Professor Trelawney: Now that Harry Potter has left Hogwarts, we are in danger! You-Know-Who is going to try a comeback! Please, Albus, I'm serious this time! 

Professor Dumbledore: ...

Professor Trelawney: Albus, I swear on a stack of seeing books, it's a real prediction this time. You can also ask any other seer you like.

Professor Dumbledore: All right, all right. I'll look into it, I promise. Please, though, Sybill, I have to address these envelopes to the new first years.

Professor Trelawney: Very well, Albus. I'll leave, if you insist. But, pretty soon there won't be a Hogwarts for the first years to come to, if you don't act soon.

****

Conversation between Macnair and Lord Voldemort, August 2, 2004.

Mr. Macnair: Everything is ready, my Lord. 

Voldemort: Very good. Now, please elaborate on what is going to take place? You ninnies haven't explained it well enough to me yet, and you leave your leader confused.

Mr. Macnair: Yes, sire. Zambini is working on a potion right now that will make you a new body shape; a temporary one. As long as you have some of the potion, you will have a body. Eventually, we can arrange for a human carrier, like you normally have had before, except for this one would conform to your own wishes.

Voldemort: Go on.

Mr. Macnair: We have also magicked all of the Seers, sire. They all have predicted the end of the world as your forthcoming. Of course, nobody believes them. We're hoping that this would create a reverse psychological effect, which will make people less aware of your presence than ever before, leaving them more venerable to attack.

Voldemort: Very complicated. Are you sure you blockheads won't screw it up, as you have before?!

Mr. Macnair: Yessir.

Voldemort: Any ill effects?

Mr. Macnair: No, sir. Wait, I take that back.

Voldemort: You're trying my patience.

Mr. Macnair: Sincere apologies, my Lord. The only bad thing that happens is that the potion that gives you a body results in some - ah - climatic occurrences.

Voldemort: What do you mean by that?!

Mr. Macnair: There will be some drastic weather changes. But nobody should be able to trace the whereabouts of the potion, unless they are looking for the exact kind of potion we are making.

Voldemort: And the chances of that are....?

Mr. Macnair: Incredibly unlikely, to say the least.

Voldemort: Very well. Have you found an accomplice within Hogwarts yet?

Mr. Macnair: Oh yes. That Professor Flitwick was easy to brainwash.

Voldemort: You are dismissed.

****

Exert from a letter from Albus Dumbledore to Cornilius Fudge, August 4, 2004.

...And in response to your earlier question concerning Mr. Gray, a rather curious thing has happened to me lately. Just the other day, Professor Trelawney burst in here, and gave me a prediction that was about the same thing as Mr. Gray's. It's rather upsetting, as most Seers never See the same things as other Seers. All the same, I remember reading somewhere that you can possess crystal balls, and tarot cards to make them predict what you want them to say. The last time a prediction like this was made was four years ago; when it was predicted that the end of the world would come on January 1, 2000, on the stroke of midnight. Many wizards and muggles alike held their breath for the end of the world, and it never came. On the wizarding part, it turned out to be a giant hoax, compliments of an angry witch that was furious with a Seer. I don't know what it was on the muggle basis, but that's a different story. I'd just wait it out, and see what becomes of it.

That's great to hear that Gringotts has gotten great inspections lately. I told you that if you increased their budget, they would do better...

****

Letter from Ron Weasley to Harry Potter, August 4, 2004.

Harry-

Can you come over by tomorrow? Dad's research is done, and he says that he is looking forward to seeing you again. So is everybody else. Honestly, Harry, you must have gotten some of the Potter charm, since my entire family is completely hooked on you. Too bad you couldn't have been born a Weasley; you probably would have been the favorite. See you tomorrow, I suppose.

-Ron

****

News report, television BBC, August 4, 2004.

Anchor: And now for weather with Susan Jai.

Susan Jai: Thank you, Carylon. Actually, some rather interesting news today. There have been reports of odd green and red clouds floating through the blue skies of London. Whenever we send a weather balloon up to check on it, the balloon dissipates into nothing! Meteorologists all over the world are baffled tonight, as this strange phenomenon continues.

Carylon Aremi: Certainly strange, Susan. All right, back to the top story of the day. A small boy falls out of an eleventh story window.... and survives to tell about it! More details with Alan Almond in the helicopter BBC. Alan?

****

Conversation between Professor Flitwick and Professor Dumbledore, August 4, 2004.

Professor Flitwick: Albus? Have a moment?

Professor Dumbledore: I suppose. It wouldn't be the first time that my letter addressing would be interrupted.

Professor Flitwick: Well, this won't take long. I just wanted to say that... that...

Professor Dumbledore: Well? What's the matter? Are you ill?

Professor Flitwick: That...

Professor Dumbledore: Are you all right? You don't look well. Why are your eyes glowing so?

Professor Flitwick: _Slephern Metaphor!_

Professor Dumbledore: What....?!

Professor Flitwick: What happened to me? Where am I? Albus? Albus?! Oh my God.... What did I do?

Mrs. Bulstrode: Move, you short fool!

Professor Flitwick: I just killed Albus Dumbledore! Oh, oh, oh...

Mr. Parkinson: Shut up! You didn't kill him, now get out of our way!

Professor Flitwick: Never! You evil, vile, heinous....!!

Mrs. Bulstrode: Do you honestly think that names matter anymore? For the last time, move!

Professor Flitwick: No.

Mr. Parkinson: Little stump of a guy has guts. Oh well. Sorry, Professor, I hope this won't hurt my daughter's grade any... _Slephern Metaphor!_

Professor Flitwick: How... could... you.....?

Mrs. Bulstrode: Move him out of the way. We have to report this to the Master... did you take care of the other professors?

Mr. Parkinson: Goyle and Crabbe were assigned to do that part. If they screw this up, it's not our doing. We need to report this, now.

****

Conversation at the Weasley residence, August 4, 2004.

Mr. Weasley: Molly, what are we having for dinner?

Mrs. Weasley: I don't know yet, I haven't fixed it. Patience is a virtue, dear.

Mr. Weasley: Now when you're hungry, it isn't!

Ginny: Harry's coming tomorrow! Harry's coming tomorrow!

Ron: Yes he is, but if you act all obsessive, than he'll want to go back to his aunt's house, I reckon.

Fred: Hey, Mum? What's that green stuff outside our window?

Mrs. Weasley: You tried that one on me yesterday. Nice try, boys.

George: Umm, no, Mum, we're serious this time...

Ron: What are you two talking about? There's no green... oh. I see.

Ginny: Mummy! There's weird stuff on our window!

Mr. Weasley: Wow. Amazing. They're not kidding this time, Molly...

Mrs. Weasley: It's a conspiracy! Oh, all right, I'll humor you, I suppose. Even though they'll be nothing... Oh my God.

Ginny: What happened to the lights?

Ron: They just... went out.

Fred: Another intelligent observation from Dr. Stupid.

Ron: Oh, shut up.

Mr. Malfoy: Hello. Such a nice evening, don't you think?

Mr. Weasley: Lucius... I knew it would be you...

Mr. Malfoy: Oh really? 

Mr. Weasley: Don't you dare hurt my family, Lucius...

Mr. Malfoy: Would I do such a thing?

George: Probably.

Mrs. Weasley: George! Quiet!

Mr. Malfoy: I wouldn't.... Unless your brats don't shut up.

Ron: You want to talk about brats? I can think of a Draco Malfoy that could fit into that category...

Mrs. Weasley: Shut your trap, Ron.

Ron: I'm only human. I couldn't resist.

Mr. Malfoy: I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that... Say good night.

Mr. Weasley: I'm warning you... don't hurt the kids, Lucius, please.

Mr. Malfoy: I didn't plan on it.

Mr. Weasley: You... didn't...?

Mr. Malfoy: Nope. I was ordered to, but I don't think I will.

Mr. Weasley: Then what do you want?

Mr. Malfoy: Nothing really.

Mr. Weasley: ...

Mr. Malfoy: Good night. _Slephern Metaphor!_

Mr. Weasley: I.. didn't... think... this was a... friendly... visit...

Mr. Malfoy: They're asleep. Take em' away.

Cart loader: Right-o.

Mr. Malfoy: Well, Weasley, I didn't hurt your kids. Wasn't that the only requirement?

****

A telegram, found in the street by an anonymous muggle, August 5, 2004.

YOU-KNOW-WHO HAS STRUCK STOP ABANDON ALL HOMES AND TOWNS AT ONCE STOP FLEE TO THE MUGGLE WORLD STOP BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE STOP GOD GO WITH US STOP

# # #

A/N: ^_^;; Well, I decided to try something different... please don't review saying this lacks emotion, that's the way it's supposed to be... No, the rest of the parts will not be like this... I just decided to try something a little different. *grins* I told you that this wouldn't be fluffy...

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: I do not claim to own any characters in this story, save the news anchors, and the radio deejays. That good? ^_~ 


	3. Washed Up on the Shores of Time

****

London, 2017.

Amfylo hunched down further into his trenchcoat. It was a cold night, with a fine mist of rain blowing around, and it was starting to penetrate into the material of the coat. It was about twelve at night, and there were very few other people out, and the ones that were out paid little attention to the man that was hurrying down the street.

Turning into an alley, he let his covering drop a bit, as the high walls shielded him from the rain. Sliding up against the wall, he slid a fresh clip into one of the pistols that he carried at his waist. Downtown London could be a very dangerous place late at night, he knew by experience.

Once he was armed to his liking, he strolled down the alley, jumping at every sound, and peering around the corners with paranoia that only belonged to the most hunted after and experienced criminals there were on the face of the planet.

Finally, Amfylo spotted a door that was barely noticeable on the grimy brick wall that expanded in front of him. He pushed it open.

Upon walking in, Amfylo was swamped by a visible cloud of cigarette smoke and water vapor, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Men sat on tipsy tables and dealt out cards, while women in tight dresses eyed them hungrily. Amfylo smiled wanly at one of the women that had taken up looking at him, and seated himself at a table in the farthest, darkest corner of the bar.

"May I help you, sir?" asked a pretty-looking waitress, in a short skirt and halter-top. Amfylo grunted briefly.

"Brandy. On the rocks," he said in a distorted voice. The woman nodded and disappeared back into the fog of cigarette smoke. There was a sudden noise to the left of him; Amfylo's hand was halfway to his pistols before he realized that it was only a brawl erupting in the bar. Amfylo looked at the scene amusedly. On a normal night, he might have joined in. But he was here tonight on business.

"Here you are, sir," the pretty waitress said, seemingly oblivious to the scene behind her. Amfylo grunted his thanks, before taking a sip of the slightly bitter liquid. The waitress sat in the chair across from him, smiling and twirling a finger in her hair. Behind his sunglasses, the girl couldn't see it, but Amfylo was looking at her in disgust.

"Are you here by yourself?" she asked flirtily. Amfylo raised the semi-clean glass again, and shook his head.

"For the time being, yes. I'm on business tonight, though."

"You busy later?"

Instead of answering that, Amfylo drained the rest of his brandy, and set the glass down with a loud clunk.

"More?" the waitress asked.

Amfylo nodded, and the girl got up, carrying the empty glass with her. He shook his head after her, and looked at the door expectantly.

"If they don't show up soon," he grumbled to himself, "I'm leaving."

As soon as he said that, the door opened again, this time revealing another figure, clad in a long trenchcoat like Amfylo himself, carrying a rather large, leather briefcase in his right hand, and looking about. Spotting Amfylo, the figure walked hastily over, and sat down, putting the briefcase beside him.

"Amfylo, right?" the figure asked in a dry, raspy voice.

"That's me."

"From what my boss hears, you're the best assassin this side of the equator, is that true?"

"I haven't failed on an assignment yet," Amfylo answered promptly.

The waitress stopped by, and set down another glass of brandy for Amfylo, then turned to the newcomer, who waved her away, saying he didn't want anything.

"So," Amfylo continued, raising the glass of alcohol, "who is it?"

The figure folded his hands on the table, exposing pale hands. "I'm sure you've heard of Shadow."

Amfylo's grip on the brandy glass tightened. "Yes," he drawled.

"Well," the figure said nonchalantly, "that's the assignment."

Amfylo drained the second glass of brandy. He was a smooth drunk, and the grotesque amounts of liquor that he downed frequently had ceased to impair his ability to do anything at all, including thinking. Amfylo licked his lips, making sure to get every last drop of drink off of them.

"What's he worth to you?" was his next question. From under the hat of the figure, there was a small smile.

"The boss is generous, when he gets what he wants," the person said, picking up the briefcase and sliding it across the table.

Even Amfylo's sunglasses couldn't contain his surprise when the top of the slick leather briefcase was flung up. There were maybe two million pounds in there.

"That's only half of it. If you complete the assignment, you get the other half."

Amfylo looked at the person oddly. "Why so much?"

The figure shook his head. "We've sent fifteen assassins after Shadow, and none of them have returned. It's hard to get anyone to keep on the job."

Amfylo shook his head. This wasn't making any sense. "What has this guy done? What does your boss want with him?"

"He's been meddling in the boss's plans."

"Why not include the authorities?"

"We have some... ah.... Operations that aren't exactly legal. Bringing in the authorities would be asking for unwanted trouble."

Amfylo leaned back in his chair and scratched his nose. So this was not only an illegal operation to begin with, it was for an illegal company. It wasn't the first time Amfylo had done such a thing, and it probably wouldn't be the last, either.

"So, do we have a deal?" asked the figure, seemingly impatient. Amfylo sighed and adjusted his sunglasses. The liquor was starting to get to him, and he wanted to go back to his room and crash, so he nodded.

"Yeah. I'll try and get this Shadow character."

"Good," the figure said, pushing the briefcase across the table. "Don't fail us."

Amfylo grunted in reply. Fishing around in his pocket, he flung a few coins on the table, to pay for the brandy and the tip. He then got up and left.

The figure watched Amfylo disappear in the smog, and sighed. Taking off the large hat, he revealed a rather startling shock of flame red hair. Taking off his dark pair of sunglasses, they concealed a pair of red-rimmed brown eyes. If one looked closely at his neck, they could see a sort of metal collar about an inch thick spanning it. Fred Weasley rubbed under the collar, as it was beginning to chafe his skin again.

"3484," a mechanical, cold voice said. "Location, 3484?"

"The Mudee Waters bar," Fred spoke tiredly, barely a trace of his old, happy-go-lucky self.

"Return to your bunker, 3484," the voice commanded, as if speaking to a dog.

"Yes, my lord," Fred whispered, putting his hat and sunglasses back on, and disappeared into thin air on the spot. 

# # #

Amfylo had many 'connections' all over town, and after a few days of research, he was able to figure out all sorts of information about Shadow, like where he normally was, what he had done, and what his specialties were as a criminal. It turned out that Shadow was an expert hacker, and a genius at mechanics of all types.

Amfylo frowned at the sheets of printed sheets in front of him. There was a lot of missing information here. For one, it said nothing about Shadow's past. Everything had been deleted carefully from any databases Amfylo could get his hands on. Granted, Amfylo knew that he was a hacker, but a person he had taken out just two weeks before was a hacker too, and he had been able to find out everything about him. It had been in the government records. One of the many things Amfylo was accomplice at was hacking into databases of all kinds. This made him a wanted man. Amfylo always laughed at the composite sketches made of him. They made him look darker and scarier than he actually was.

Another thing strange about this Shadow character was that Amfylo couldn't find his true identity. Shadow wasn't exactly a real name, but more of an alias. In fact, Amfylo couldn't think of a single person in the world in their right minds that would name their kid Shadow. 

He looked at the battered analog clock than hung disheveled on the wall. It read two-thirty. Amfylo walked over to his bed, hearing the thin mattress on the metal bedstead creak as his weight settled onto it. Removing his sunglasses, which he had worn so much during the day it had become unnatural not to, he rubbed at his eyes. Leaning back on the bed, he felt blindly for the bottle of gin he kept at his bedside. Finding it empty, he grunted his contempt and hurled it against the wall.

Amfylo knew he had a drinking problem, he knew very well that he was probably an alcoholic in the worst degree there was. It had gotten to the point that he felt he couldn't function properly without the stimulant running through his veins. Often, his conscious would get the better of him, as it did now.

"What have I done?" he moaned, rolling over. His nightmares from the past often haunted him, which was why he never slept for more than three hours a night, if he was lucky. For the first part, being an assassin always gives you a feeling that somebody's after you, and in Amfylo's case, somebody normally was.

Curling into a tight ball, Amfylo fell into a fitful doze for the remainder of the night.

# # # 

__

"What is going on?" I indignantly ask. I don't like being thrown out of my house like this. Why doesn't this person understand that I don't want to be with other people right now? I've spent forever with people. God, how I hate people.

"It's just for a while..." he explains. I see his lips move, but I don't hear my name. My God. Have I really gone so far as to forget my name? Who is this person, anyway? Is he my father? My uncle? Who? Why can't I think?!

"I don't want to go," I proclaim angrily. The only response that gets me is an incensed movement from the blob, and more voices.

"What is going on?" I ask again. I ask the question again and again. It sounds like a record stuck in a crack. 'What is going on? What is going on?' Who am I asking? This man? Another person? Am I asking this question to myself? What does it mean? I don't know what is going on! Somebody help! Anybody! God... What is going on?

It was here that Amfylo woke up, in a cold sweat. He couldn't remember the dream, or who it was in the dream, but he really didn't want to remember in the first place.

# # #

"Mr. Green!" came the harried female voice. "Mr. Green, you haven't paid your rent for three months. Mr. Green, I'm not joking!"

Amfylo rolled over and stuffed his fingers in his ears. While it was true he hadn't paid his rent in almost forever, he didn't care to have it flung in his face at six in the morning. It wasn't exactly his fault that business had been slow for the last couple of months.

"Mr. Green! I'm going to kick you out soon, you leave me no choice," the female landlord went on. Amfylo groaned, smacking himself over the fact that his alias was so... stupidly bland. Gregory Green. It looked like something that would be found randomly in a phone book; who would imagine that a man named Gregory Green could be the most wanted hitman in London?

"Gretchen, I swear," he moaned, rolling back over again, feeling for the leather briefcase that was under his bed. Flipping it open, he grabbed a handful of bills and stormed at the door, banging it open.

The lady that owned the apartments where Amfylo lived was not a beautiful woman. She was missing her two front teeth, and the ones that she did have left were frightfully crooked and yellowed. Her head took on the appearance of a gigantic balloon, worse so when she was angry. Her gray hair always hung down in lank strands, and just the sight of her made Amfylo want to hurl up his last meal. It was worse at six in the morning.

"Here. Now, leave a man to sleep in peace," he demanded, throwing the handful of pounds out the door. "That should cover the last three months, with your stupid ten percent interest, and payment for the next month!" it was here that he slammed the door in the woman's face.

"Thank you, Mr. Green," Gretchen said sweetly. Amfylo could hear her sweeping around, picking up every last pound that her beady little eyes could see. He shook his head and flopped back on the bed, even though he knew it was futile to go to sleep. After a few minutes, he got back up and put on his trenchcoat again, along with his glasses. Lacing up his boots, he grabbed a handful of bills and left the room.

London at sunrise could be a very beautiful place, but Amfylo couldn't see the sky. Instead, he focused on his destination: Eure's Warehouse, on the edge of town. It was here that Shadow would be, he had gathered. Stepping up on the curb, he carefully waved a taxicab down, and got in.

"Where to?" the taxi man asked. He was a rather large, short, Italian man, with a thick accent. Amfylo raised the collar on his coat before replying.

"Varry's Jewelers," he said in his thick, raspy whisper that he used with most other folk. The Italian man smiled, before setting the cabby fare box up and pressing the gas petal down.

"Need ta' get sumthin for the missus?" the man asked, turning a corner sharply. Amfylo grunted in response.

"Yeah," he said, trying not to spark too much conversation.

"Well, you might want to start by changing yer getup. The durk and stermy look yee got pro'bly 'taint helpin much," the man laughed.

"Look, don't question me, just drive," Amfylo snapped. If it was one thing he hated, it was nosey people. He was always afraid of giving too much information away.

"Ay! Don' get sherp with me, sun."

They drove in silence for the rest of the way. Amfylo stared outside at the passing landscape. He really hated taxis, but the bus took too long, and he didn't have a driver's license. Besides, he didn't think that he could keep a car in proper working order.

"'Ere you are, sun," the cabby said gruffly. "That'll be 'bout twenty-five-fifta'," he finished, holding his hand over the side of the seat. Amfylo quickly counted out three bills into his hand. 

"Keep the change," he snapped, stepping out of the smelly car. The cabman tipped his hat slightly as Amfylo slammed the door shut.

Varry's Jeweler's was an out-of-the way shop, with a torn maroon awning, and dusty windows, where 'pearls' were displayed.

Along with an accomplished businessman, Varry was also a very slick con artist. Most of the 'jewels' he sold in his store were genuine fakes. Of course, everyone who found out that the jewels that they bought were fake knew that had gotten them from Varry. He was so slippery, however, that he was able to worm his way out of all of his fixes, reputation untarnished.

Amfylo pushed his way into the store, and saw a young, nervous looking young man dusting off display cases as if his life depended upon it. He looked up when Amfylo entered the room, and scuttled over to him.

"Hello, sir. How may I help you today?" he asked in an overly fawning voice. Amfylo rolled his eyes in the back of his head and pushed the kid over to the side.

"I want to see the other merchandise," he said. The kid scampered off the floor and looked at Amfylo nervously.

"What other merchandise?" he asked. Amfylo sighed, and reached out, grabbed the kid's shirt, and lifted him up onto his tiptoes.

"S-s-sir, if you don't-t-t s-s-stop, I-I-I-I'm g-g-going to have to ask-k-k you to l-l-leave," he said as bravely as he could. Amfylo dropped his grip on the shirt, and the boy fell in a heap on the ground.

"VARRY!" he called in the small, one-room shop.

A short, fat man appeared from a doorway in the back, looking alarmed. His hired help jumped off the floor and ran over to Varry.

"He's causing a disturbance, sir!" he whined pitifully. Varry looked at Amfylo oddly before smiling.

"Gregory Green! Or, shall I say, Amfylo?" he asked pleasantly. The color in the kid's face drained until he was paper-white.

"A-A-A-mfylo?" he asked. "The serial killer?"

"Not quite," Amfylo replied off-handedly. "Assassin."

Varry laughed. "Carlos, go back to your dusting. It's okay; he only kills when he gets paid to do so. Amfylo grunted and looked in the direction of the now-quaking-in-fear Carlos.

"Or, if someone alerts the cops about me," he said warningly. Carlos's eyes got so big, they nearly bulged out of his head.

"Stop it, Amfylo," Varry warned, slinging an arm around his friend's shoulders. "You'll scare away the hired help."

Varry led Amfylo into the backroom, where assorted clusters of boxes were heaped up to the ceiling of the room. He pushed some of the plain cardboard boxes out of the way before revealing a small, polished box, about the size of a box of dominoes. Varry handed it to Amfylo, who inspected it thoroughly.

Inside was a small, handsome silver pistol. There was a groove in the top that was empty; obviously meant for oil. Soft velvet scraps were in a compartment towards the back, and two clips of silver bullets fit into slots on the side.

"Very powerful, she is," Varry remarked, breaking the silence in Amfylo's revelry. "Them bullets have diamond in them, the strongest material on earth, you know."

"And knowing you," Amfylo growled, "the diamonds are probably fake." Varry gave him a sugary smile.

"Would I do that to you?" he asked.

Preferring not to answer that question, Amfylo snapped the small, red leather case shut and looked at Varry. "How much 'she cost?" he asked.

"I'd give her five hundred pounds and one of your old guns," Varry said, after much consideration. "She's the only gun I have, and I can't leave me store unguarded."

Amfylo sighed, and pocketed the new gun. "Here," he said, handing Varry a wad of cash and a slightly tarnished, palm-sized pistol.

"Happy doing business with you," Varry said, taking the roll of bills. "By the way, I just got a shipment of 'genuine' Indian pearls in today. Would you be interested in buying any?"

"Not really," Amfylo said, distracted by his new gun.

"For free, then," Varry challenged. When Amfylo looked at him oddly, he sighed. "I have too many of the damn things. Bad for inventory. Take it!" he demanded, throwing a handful of 'pearl' necklaces at him. Amfylo sighed and shoved the glossy plastic beads into his pockets.

"Bye, Carlos," Amfylo said wickedly on his way out. Carlos squeaked like a squashed mouse and ducked behind a cabinet.

# # #

Eure's Warehouse was at the very outskirts of London, facing away from the city. It had actually been abandoned several years ago, thanks to recent fire code laws. It had never been torn down, because of the lazy government, and it had been silent for years anyhow.

"Shadows are silent," Amfylo whispered to himself, just to make sure that this was real. He tended to turn into a different person when he was on the hunt; more animal, less human. Having two pistols at the ready, he crept on the warehouse, which loomed before him like a gigantic black monster.

The large metal double doors were slightly open, but Amfylo knew better than to try and pry them open. Doing so would almost certainly make it squeak, and the sound would give away the precious element of surprise. Instead he rounded the building, until he found a pile of dumpsters and crates, which he used as stepping stones to climb onto the rusty, ridged metal roof.

Creeping carefully across the slates, he stopped when he saw a broken skylight. He peered in.

For a few moments, Amfylo couldn't see anything. There was a solitary lightbulb in one corner of the room, and a tiny flickering candle, but that was all for light. Squinting down into the darkness, he saw something move. Then something moved into the small point of fire.

It was a small, black blob, or so it appeared to be. From his high off vantagepoint, the figure seemed to be shorter that Amfylo himself, but of the same body build. The person settled down onto a pile of cloth, and grabbed a small metal can. Using a rather long dagger, he cut the top off and began to eat.

Amfylo's heartpace quickened and his muscles tensed. Shadow was unaware that he was near. This was the perfect time to strike.

Smash! Amfylo crashed through the small skylight, and landed on the ground, in pounce position.

Unluckily for Amfylo, however, Shadow was as quick and elusive as his namesake. For a split second he stared dumbly at Amfylo, but then he dropped the can and was of faster than a rocket into the darkness.

Cursing vividly, Amfylo was on his heels, until Shadow turned a sharp corner, and disappeared into the darkness. Biting his lip, Amfylo's eyes adjusted to the dark. It didn't help much, but he could now tell the difference between the black empty spaces, and the darker blotches, which were the boxes. All right, Amfylo thought, if you want to play hide and seek, that's fine with me. Sidling up against the wall, he carefully inched his way around the perimeter of the place.

There was no sound, other than Amfylo's loudly thumping heart, which was trying to get his brain to convey fear, but his brain wasn't listening. Instead, it sent jolts of excitement to the tips of his fingers. On the other side of the room, there was a slight scuffle of movement from Shadow. Overhead, an owl hooted.

Eventually, impatience took over common sense, and Amfylo strode into the center of the warehouse. There was a sound overhead. Amfylo looked up, to see Shadow standing on a pile of boxes, cloak swinging out behind, looking reminiscent of a demented Batman.

Shadow leaped, dagger pointed down. Amfylo dropped to the ground and rolled over to the side to avoid being speared. Amfylo was bigger, but Shadow was quick. Amfylo couldn't keep his hands on him, and he lost sight of him again.

He got to his feet, but as soon as he did so, something hit him hard in the back, and he fell to the ground, completely winded. He struggled to get to his feet, but Shadow had both of his arms pinned behind his back and the knife pointed at the back of his neck. Quickly, Shadow rolled him over, and then pressed both of his knees against Amfylo's stomach, pinning his arms between Amfylo's back and the floor.

After having felt safe in his presence, Shadow worked idly, stripping his foe of all weaponry. Amfylo watched as Shadow took off his gun-belt, looked at it carefully, and then tossed it aside. This silent arrangement went on for quite awhile, before Shadow spoke.

"So," he whispered. "Are you ready to tell me who sent you?" Amfylo, who was not willing to talk, spat in Shadow's face.

Shadow slowly wiped the slob off of his nose, before turning his head down to Amfylo's and slapping him. Amfylo winced in pain, before glaring back up at Shadow.

"Don't do that again," Shadow advised. Amfylo looked at Shadow carefully. He was a non-descriptive character. In fact, he looked a lot like he was wearing a Grim Reaper costume that little children wore for Halloween. A long black cloak with a hood reached down to his ankles, where a pair of black leather boots was tightly laced. Over his face was stretched a tight piece of black cloth, so you couldn't see the face of Shadow, but you could make out the two bumps of lips, the large curve of the nose, and the two cavities for eyes. Shadow was now reaching into Amfylo's pockets and slapping his chest harshly to check for knives.

When Shadow was sure his foe was unarmed, he leaned forward and pressed the long dagger against Amfylo's neck. 

"Who sent you?" he breathed. Amfylo didn't answer. Instead, he took note of the fact that Shadow had let up on his arms, so he could wiggle free.

"Well, actually, It's a rather long story," Amfylo stalled, trying to buy time. Shadow pressed the blade harder against his neck. Amfylo could feel a small trickle of blood starting to run down his neck.

"I don't want a long story," Shadow rasped. "I want the facts. And I want them straight, if you're interested in living."

Amfylo sighed, but was able to wriggle one hand free. Wondering what he was going to do with that one hand, he slid it into one of the trenchcoat's many pockets, where it met the fake pearls that Varry had given him earlier.

Grasping the beads tightly, he reared his hand back and threw them across the room. Beads flew everywhere. The tinny noise was enough to make Shadow briefly turn. Amfylo took the opportunity. In one movement, he kicked Shadow away from him, knocked the blade away, and grabbed a pistol that was lying on the ground.

Grabbing Shadow roughly by the neck, he slammed him into the wall, and pressed the gun barrel on his forehead. 

"Pity," Amfylo said. Shadow was silent.

When Amfylo pressed the gun barrel harder, he noticed something was leaking out of Shadow's head covering. Reaching up with his thumb, he wiped some of it off and looked at it. It was a peach-ish color, and had no odor. Tasting it, he found it had a bland taste, although it was slightly salty with sweat.

"Concealer?" asked Amfylo. "You wear makeup?!" Shadow still said nothing.

A sneaking suspicion hit Amfylo. Sliding the pistol down to Shadow's neck, he took his thumb and rubbed hard against Shadow's forehead. There was a slight groove below the black material. 

Amfylo smirked, and brought the gun down. He couldn't see his face, but he knew that Shadow was looking at him confusedly.

"Aren't you going to kill me?" Shadow whispered. Amfylo just laughed, and pressed the gun back on Shadow's chest, so he couldn't go anywhere.

"Why would I kill the most famous wizard of all time, _Harry Potter_?"

With that statement, Amfylo reached up with his left hand and tore 'Shadow's' mask in two. Sure enough, unruly black hair and green eyes stared back at him, in bewilderment. The only difference between this and the old Harry Potter, was the fact that he had no scar. Amfylo reached up with his left hand, and wiped it across Harry's forehead. The layer of concealer came off, and the lightning shaped scar was still there.

"How....?" Harry asked, seemingly obvilous to the fact that Amfylo was pointing a gun to his chest. "Who are you?"

Amfylo smirked again, and dropped the gun to the ground with a clatter. Removing his hat and sunglasses, Harry found himself looking at a very tall male, with silver-blonde hair and gray eyes. Harry gaped for a moment.

"Malfoy?"

A/N: Well, did you like? Please tell me! *puts on best puppy face she can find* I only got two reviews last time! I need to know what you think! *grumbles* Maybe the severe cliffhanger will prompt the reviews along a tad.... By the way, I hope that the content of this chapter didn't offend anyone, it wasn't meant to. ^_~

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: All characters in the Harry Potter series belong to the fabulous J.K. Rowling. Don't sue. I don't think I have anything ya'd want anyhow. -_-;;


	4. Felons, Friends, or Foes?

"_Draco_ Malfoy?" Harry/Shadow asked in disbelief.

Draco shuddered at the sudden onslaught of memories and flashbacks that the name Draco Malfoy brought to his senses. Of course, a little nagging piece of him always knew that, always knew that he wasn't the assassin Amfylo, or the ordinary, boring Gregory Green. He knew that he was the one and only, Draco Malfoy. Over these last ten years, he had blocked that out of his waking memory. Only in his dreams did the truth look out at him, when he saw through the eyes of the boy that was ten years ago.

"Yeah," he choked out. It was lucky that that simple acknowledgement was only a single syllable, because a huge lump had suddenly appeared in the back of his throat.

"It's been a while," Harry whispered, sounding not unlike the shadow part he had played for the last ten years.

Draco, meanwhile, was still stuck on his name. His brain flooded with what used to be, and he wondered if the assassin Amfylo was in any way the same person as this strange Draco Malfoy person. 

Amfylo was a person of the shadow, earning wages by slinking around; murdering people in their sleep to make ends meet. He was a hacker, a wanted man, and a dangerous criminal. He was a man of many faces and names to keep out of the grip of the law. Of course, Amfylo was smart enough to know that he would eventually be caught and dealt the cards of justice, but hey; life's a bitch and then you die, right?

Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, was very different, yet oddly, the same. Draco was the son of a wealthy, high-class family, whose most prominent worry was how to get revenge on the enemy 'Potter'. He was very outspoken, very sarcastic, and if he was displeased, the world knew in less than a clock-tick. Confused, angry, and sometimes neglected, he grew up a hard shell, which protected a human inside, which he rarely, if ever, showed. But the one thing that Draco Malfoy represented more than anything, was a singular, dangerous word. Amfylo regarded this word like a black hole; one wrong step and you slipped in and were gone forever into the black hells of it. This word was Magic.

Seeing that Draco was stuck in some kind of time lapse, Harry slid to the floor, and waited for him to stop staring blankly at nothing. When Draco looked down ten minutes later, he saw a sight that he had never thought he would see in a million years. Harry was smoking. Harry looked up and offered him a crumpled package.

"Cigarette?" he asked blandly, as if this was something not out of the ordinary. Draco couldn't find words, so he just shook his head.

My God, Draco thought. Have we really gone that far?

"So, would you mind telling me who sent you, now?" Harry went on, oblivious to the pregnant pauses that were happening frequently. Draco rubbed at the spot where he had been slapped before, and slid to the ground beside Harry.

"I honestly don't know," he sighed. Harry looked at him oddly, and Draco waved his hand. "No, I'm serious this time. I don't know. A guy met me at a bar, handed me a suitcase of money, and told me that his boss wanted you dead. Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? I'm lost."

There was another very long pause, as Harry blew smoke into the air, watched it curl up into little ringlets, and dissipate into nothing.

"Have you been back recently?" he finally asked.

"Back where?"

"You know where."

"No..."

"You know, back from where you came."

Draco knew very well what Harry was trying to get at. It was an issue that Draco could compare with sex. Everybody knew it was there, in fact, most people thought about it very frequently. In open society, however, nobody spoke about it, because it was a very awkward subject.

"To the wizarding world?" he asked uncomfortably. Harry nodded slowly. "Not in ten years."

"Why not?" Harry asked innocently.

Draco shuddered. "I haven't wanted to."

"You're _afraid_ to go back."

Draco opened his mouth to argue, but then he decided not to waste so much breath on lies.

"Well," he finally sighed. "I wasn't totally lying. I _don't_ want to go back. Torturing me, however, is not answering my question. _What the hell is going on?_"

Harry sighed. "If you haven't been back, you might as well know that Voldemort has totally taken over the wizarding world. That person you were talking to? It was either one of Voldemort's prisoners or allies."

Draco barely stopped his mouth from dropping. He had come within a brush of death, and hadn't realized it. Or, he saw magic as death now, from his point of view.

"They want me in the muggle world, because Voldemort brainwashed the entire world, almost, into thinking that I was a hacker. That way if a muggle captured me, well, Voldemort had extra help, and most of society doesn't know it. Well, that's what I think, anyhow."

"How in the name of God did you escape from Voldemort? Wouldn't it be you he would want the most?" Draco asked, intrigued.

Harry shook his head and took another inhale of the cigarette he was holding. Draco coughed. Out of all of the terrible habits that he had picked up, he was thankful that smoking wasn't one of them.

"I was in the muggle world DeathDay," he sighed, tired of explaining.

"DeathDay?"

"My God, Malfoy. How long has it been since you were in the wizarding world? DeathDay is August fourth. The day that Voldemort took over. I sent five letters to Ron, and he never responded. I then managed to get my hands on an old copy of the Daily Prophet. It was front-page news. I can still see the headline now," he croaked, voice going deeper and gruffer with every syllable he spoke. His eyes got a glazed over look, as if he were reading the headline of that day.

"Voldemort Takes Over Hogwarts, it read. Staff Unreachable At Time. I knew right then that the wizarding world would not be there to welcome me. Going back to my aunt and uncle's house was out of the question, and well, to make it short, one thing built upon another, and this is how I turned out."

By the time that Harry had finished telling his story, Draco had a cigarette in his mouth, and was simultaneously drinking from a flask he held in his hand. These last ten years he knew things weren't going to be wonderful back in his 'old' world. But he didn't think that it would have been this bad.

"So," Harry concluded. "Why the hell are you here?" Draco shook his head.

"I'd rather not talk about that," he said dizzily. Maybe he could resist liquor by itself, but liquor and cigarettes were too much.

Seeing that Malfoy was rather out of his mind at the moment, Harry shook his head and stamped out his cigarette. He then looked down at Draco's hand; he shrugged and took the flask from it.

"You don't mind, do you?" he asked.

"Nahrah," Draco babbled. He might have been saying something, but his words were so slurred that Harry couldn't make any sense of it.

"I didn't think so," Harry said.

Some say that when you are intoxicated to your highest points, you can sense things that others can't. Of course, reflexes and speech hit rock bottom, but certain things become very prominent in your mind. In his cloudy haze of a mind, Draco vaguely noticed that something not too far away was thumping rhythmically. It rattled in the ground, sending vibrations that seemed to shake Draco's bones. He moaned and slid farther down the wall.

"Don't walk so noisily," he begged to Harry. Harry looked down at him oddly.

"I'm not walking, stupid. What's up with you?" he asked Draco.

"Somebody is walking," Draco insisted. The thumping became more frequent, and louder to Draco's inflamed senses.

"Malfoy, I don't think - " There was a squeak, and a bright light shone right over Harry and Draco.

"Hey! You kids! This is private property...." a gruff voice yelled, before trailing off into nothing.

"It's Shadow and Amfylo!" a squeaky voice screeched. There was a bright flash to the left of Draco - a camera.

"Freeze! You're all under arrest!" The original voice pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Harry. Harry put his hands up. Draco, who was still rather out of it, didn't move.

"Any bright ideas, Potter?" drawled Draco to Harry.

Harry bit the inside of his lip. He could think of a way to get out of this, but it would involve killing people. Harry disliked bloodshed, but if it was the only way....

In the semi-darkness of the room, Harry slowly slid a hand down into into his inner robe. There was a small pistol concealed there. Removing it from its clip, he slowly rose his hand in the surrender sign again.

Quickly, while the officers were still unmoving in the silent staredown, Harry dropped, rolled, and shot a bullet between the lead officer's legs.

Confused, the officer turned around to see what he had been aiming at. Directly behind him, there was a large metal barrel with the words: **Danger. Very Flammable. Keep away from fire.** His eyes widened, but it was too late.

The two convicts were bolting through a door on the side, running like mad away from the warehouse. The man didn't even have time to scream.

There was a gigantic explosion that shook the ground, and a pillar of golden-orange lit the night, like sunrise was coming early.

Harry and Draco dove behind a mound of garbage as debris fell down like rain. Harry shuffled over to the side as a pipe fell down. Draco had collapsed against the stinking mound of trash, fallen from his intoxication and the sudden excitement. Harry wearily felt for a pulse. Draco's body must have been amazingly strong, because he was still breathing regularly. Finding that Draco was okay, Harry leaned against the pile and breathed in the thick, musty scent of discards, before dropping off himself.

Out of the eight men that were in the warehouse that night, only three of them survived the mass explosion. Two of them were Harry and Draco, known to the rest of the world as Shadow and Amfylo. The third was the photographer.

# # #

****

Escaped Felons Found Outside London

The man put down the newspaper, not really caring much about the muggle news. Flicking a hand to one of the gray-robed servants/slaves, he motioned for some water. Casually he sighed and picked up the paper and looked at the picture below the oversized headline. When he got a good look at it, his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. This scared the people standing by his throne, waiting for his orders.

****

"Bring me a wand, an enlarger, or a magnifying glass!" he barked to the lot of them. "I don't care what excuse you have to make to get it, or how many things you pull to find them, get me one!" The servants took that as enough of a leave and scampered off in all different directions, not unlike scared mice.

****

The servant he had sent for water came carefully back with a large crystal goblet, struggling not to spill a drop of the liquid, or go too slow. She handed the large glass to her master, put his palms flat on her thighs and bowed low, as was custom now.

****

"Why didn't you stay all day?" the man snapped.

Even though the young girl's flaming red locks were toppled in front of her face, the man could see her cheeks go bright pink, and her body convulsed slightly in fear.

****

The man smiled. Even though he didn't show it outwardly, he was rather fond of this servant girl. Maybe one of these days he might assign her to be one of his 'room servants'. Everyone knew what a 'room servant' was code for, it was no big secret, but people preferred to use euphemisms for the subject. He lifted his hand and stroked the girl's head, as ifconferring with an animal.

****

"What is your name, Pretty One?" he asked, deep baritone voice warm and friendly. "Rise and tell me."

****

The girl slowly let her hands slide off her palms and ball into fists. Even more slowly she raised her head and looked up at the man, surprised in the kind tone at which he was addressing her. The drab gray frock she was wearing was not flattering, and she was bone-thin, but she still had an air of timid meekness that made her rather attractive. Dull brown eyes looked at him wonderingly from a face, which the white skin was pulled too tightly over her skull.The only colorful part about her was her bright red hair, which hung limply to her elbows.

****

"Ginny Weasley, my Lord," she whispered meekly, brown eyes staring innocently into the man's own orbs of pale, pale blue.

****

"Mmmm. A Weasley. I should have known, with the red hair deal and all... well, thank you for the water, m'dear."

****

Ginny took that as enough of a leave, and retreated back to her spot on the wall, paler than before.

****

The man leaned back on his chair and took a small sip of the large goblet idly. The water was pleasantly cool, as well as flavored with crushed mint leaves. It was quite refreshing.

****

Finally, one of the servants came back with a magnifying glass, bowed with his palms on his thighs, and went to the wall. The man grabbed the magnifying glass, and peered at the picture on the paper.

****

It was quite blurry, and not too descriptive, but the man knew the two men who were in the distorted snapshot.

A bewildered looking Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter stared out of the non-moving picture. The man bit his lip. So it was true. The two fugitives from the wizarding world were still alive and kicking. They were also apparently making front-page news. Malfoy and the Lord had to know about this as soon as possible.

He snapped to his feet, and began yelling to his servants. "Find an excuse to get me to see your Lord, and Master Malfoy! I don't give a damn if you have to cut throats to do it! Tell 'em that Master Parkinson says that it's more important than anything right now!" Mr. Parkinson barked.

# # #

A very tired, dirty, smelly, and sore Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter blundered into 'Gregory Green's' apartment at about twelve the next day. They had woken up about three hours ago, managed to drag themselves out of the garbage dump, past the charred remains of Eure's Warehouse, and through London. Not really caring what Draco said, Harry collapsed on the small mattress.

"I'm going to take a shower now," Draco announced, running his fingers through his hair, and grimacing at the handful of grime he got.

"Have fun," Harry mumbled into the pillow. Draco exited into a door to the right. Harry managed to roll over and look around at Draco's apartment.

It was very small, and everything was crammed into the tiny room. A single window was open to let in the breeze, and thin white curtains fluttered in the wind. Below the window were a sink, a countertop, a stove, and a refrigerator that looked straight out of the 1960's. Over to the right, a cupboard was nailed next to the refrigerator, with one door missing. A recliner that was duct taped sat across from a small TV set; a table was jammed in the midst of it all. The bed that Harry was on had a metal bedframe, and a thin, pinstriped mattress. Harry wondered how a high-classed person like Draco could adjust from the high life and crash into the dump in a matter of days.

It was at this moment that Draco walked back in, wrapped in a towel. Harry groaned and rolled over.

"Christ, man! Put on some _clothes_!" he said, burying his head in the pillow. Draco gave a toothy grin.

"You're lucky I'm wearing anything," he said. Harry's eyes popped open. By Malfoy's tone of voice, he wasn't sure if he was joking or not. He sincerely hoped he was. Malfoy prancing around his apartment in the nude was.... Disturbing at the very least. Harry cursed his brain for thinking such thoughts.

When Harry turned over again, Malfoy was clad in a trenchcoat like he was the day before, and he was shuffling through the contents of his cupboard, before removing a small can.

"Coffee?" he asked, spooning some into a coffee maker. Harry sighed. He desperately wanted something warm to drink, but coffee was too bitter for him.

"You wouldn't happen to have any tea, would you?" he asked as politely as he could. Draco glared at him, muttering something about not owning a restaurant. After some more rummaging, he came up with a very dusty little tin. He blew some dirt off, and promptly coughed. Harry made a face.

"Coffee is fine with me," he said, forcibly agreeable. "I'm going to take a shower."

Draco was getting out mugs. "Have fun," he said. Harry walked in the tiny bathroom, rolling his eyes.

The bathroom was plain, white walls, with white tiles, and very dirty grout. The shower had very bad mildew and soap scum in it. Harry made a face. Draco certainly wasn't much for keeping house. There was a damp towel hanging awry on the towel rack, and another wadded on the floor. The sink had a ring in it; the mirror had a huge crack in it. Harry sealed his lips and didn't say anything.

When he'd finished with his shower, he put on his black robe, as he had nothing else to wear, and strode out, slicking back his wet black hair with an absent hand.

Draco was busy pouring the coffee into the mugs. He looked up and opened the cupboard again, pulling out a small flask of something and pouring some into his mug. He looked up at Harry and gave something of a grimace.

"'Gives it more flavor," he explained mindlessly. "'Snot so bitter lestways."

Harry nodded, and grabbed the cup with no liquor in it. "You drink too much," he commented. "You're ruining your liver."

"I'm not going to live forever either way," Draco remarked frankly. "No use trying to spend life breaking habits."

Harry shrugged. It was one way of looking at things, he supposed. Taking a sip of the black coffee, he pulled a face at the bitterness of it.

"So," he said, staring into the black depths of his mug, "you still haven't told me why you're in the muggle world."

Draco sighed. "It was more of a rebellion thing than anything," he said quietly. "I was tired of being Father's shadow. I didn't run away to be noble or anything like that. In fact, I'm indifferent to Voldemort in either way. If he doesn't take over, I'm still a very influential figure. If he does, I'm influential. I was rich. Life was perfect.

He never listened to me, though. I hated that. He never paid any attention to me, which was worse. When he did, it was normally cross attention."

He had his arms crossed, with the coffee cup latched under his finger. Harry was silent, hands wrapped around the mug. It was very hot, but Harry didn't seem to mind.

"He knocked me down a couple of times when he was really angry with me. It was quite degrading really; being eighteen and having your father slap you down. Well, on the fourth of August - DeathDay as you call it - I left. I never came back. Does that answer your question?"

Harry's jaw moved a little. It did answer his question, although with a vengeance. He couldn't think of anything to say.

"Oh," was what he finally managed to make out. Draco's lips curled up in a cruel sort of smile.

"The assassin thing happened when I got caught up with a gang in eastern London. Then I got word that the wizarding world was in shambles. I was only eighteen; I was terrified. What was I supposed to do?"

"Oh," Harry said again, pulling a mouthful of bitter coffee to clear his head. The caffeine felt good through his system.

"So," Draco said, setting his empty mug down with a clunk in the sink, "what do you really want? I'm sure you didn't follow me all the way here for storytime."

Harry smiled blearily, and finished off the rest of the coffee. "Two reasons. One, my current housing was destroyed with the gas explosion."

"And the other?" Draco prompted.

"Well, I just wanted to see if you were willing to come back. Actually, you are coming back."

Draco involuntarily stiffened at that remark. "And who's going to make me? You?"

Harry smiled. If it was one thing he had gotten good at during his years abroad in the muggle world, it was messing with people's minds.

"No. Your own mind is going to make you. I'm not going to."

There was long pause after that remark. Long pauses were normally good in situations like this. If he knew Draco Malfoy at all, it was that he was very curious. He always had been. He probably still was.

"When do we leave?" Draco finally whispered, eyes closed.

Harry grinned. He knew he would win. "First thing tomorrow morning."

A/N: Well, we're humming along.... Hope you like... can't think of much else to say... err.... Well then. By the way, I was VERY pleased by the amount of lovely reviews I got last time, and I hope that this time will be the same. *makes sure no one is looking, and then slips a twenty dollar bill in your pocket as bribe for review* ^_^;;

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: Nothing in the Harry Potter books, or series, or whatever ya wanna call it, it mine. No sue! Gooooood lawyers... 


	5. Two Guys, a Baby Girl, and Fate

Draco didn't like the idea of going back to the magical world in the first place. It was ten times worse that he had to go back with black hair.

"I don't see why we have to do all of this covering up," Draco complained as he watched the black hair dye slosh around the sink. "I don't want black hair."

"Shut up, or you're going to have a black face when the dye splashes up onto your skin," Harry advised, watching Draco gingerly dip his head into the sink. He put on some rubber gloves, grabbed a cup, and assisted Draco in pouring the liquid over his head.

"Besides," Harry added tactically, "you don't want to be recognized, do you?" Draco didn't say anything, for fear of inhaling black water.

Ten minutes later, Harry yanked Draco's head out of the water, and promptly mashed a few pieces of aluminum foil around his skull.

"What's that for?!" Draco asked indignantly. He looked up and saw that Harry also had foil around his head. "Potter, I thought that we were going back, not playing beauty parlor."

"You want the dye to stick or not?! Look, if you don't like it, you can dye it back. All's you need was peroxide, since your hair is practically white anyway."

"Why can't you just use a wa-w-wand?" Draco asked, having trouble pulling the word out of his mouth.

"Two reasons. One, I snapped and destroyed my wand about eight years ago. Two, they'd be able to see through the magic disguises."

"This really, really, sucks," Draco muttered, fingering the foil and wondering how stupid he must look.

A half-hour later, Harry said that Draco could take the foil off. He did so with gusto, and peered into the mirror in the bathroom.

"Your hair must have dyed well, since it's so light," Harry remarked.

Draco was staring at himself, except for he had hair darker than ink. It's different, Draco reluctantly admitted to himself, but it's not _that_ bad, I suppose.

"It's not that different," Draco said instead. "It still looks like Draco Malfoy, with Potter's hair," he shuddered.

"That's because we're not done yet," Harry said from the other room. Draco looked around the doorframe, to see a Harry Potter, except for he had light blond hair with black streaks.

"I have such dark hair, it's hard to dye," he sighed. Draco sighed too. He felt so stupid dying his hair. He was starting to reconsider going back anyway.

"What are you doing?" asked Draco, as Harry produced a large amount of brown paint, dumped it into a bucket, and started rummaging through his cupboard.

"You wouldn't happen to have any flour, would you?" Harry asked distantly.

"I don't cook."

"Do you know where I could get some?"

"The store."

"Forget it."

Harry handed the bucket over to Draco, who looked it over incredulously.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked.

"Put it on."

"What?! I'm not putting paint on my body!"

"It doesn't poison you. You need to change your skin color. The flour would make it less messy, but since you don't have any..."

"Forget this. I'm not going. This is too much work," Draco remarked stubbornly, setting the bucket on the ground.

"Fine. So, what are you going to do now, _Amfylo_? Kill me, collect your pay, and go on living your miserable life in the gutter?"

Draco didn't say anything. Harry handed him a sponge. 

"This makes it easier to put on."

Draco grabbed the sponge, stared daggers at Harry, and stormed back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him viciously.

"Too easy," Harry grinned, getting ready to redye his hair.

Still a half-hour later, Draco Malfoy emerged, chocolate-colored skin, and inky-black hair. He flung the bucket and sponge to the side, and glared at Harry for a moment.

Harry had dyed his hair a very, very light blonde, and had obviously done some skin work of his own. His flesh-tone was now icily white and his eyes were a pearly whitish-grayish. He actually looked a lot like Draco did before, but with overly exaggerated features. The scar was nowhere to be seen.

"How did you change your eyes?" asked Draco, his curiosity getting the better of him, as usual.

"Muggle contacts. They're quite interesting. You need brown eyes. Here," he said, handing up a box. 

After fifteen minutes of intense struggle, Draco managed to blink the slippery plastic lenses into his eyes, and looked in the mirror. Draco Malfoy did not look back at him. Who did, was a person that looked vaguely like a Native American.

"'We done yet?" asked Draco crossly.

"Yes."

"Do you know how to get into the wizarding world?"

"Yes."

"Can we go now?"

"Yes."

Draco went into his room to grab a pistol, but Harry stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"No guns in the wizarding world, remember?"

Draco had to bite back every instinct to snap back at Harry, because he knew that Harry was right. How could he have forgotten? Fifteen years ago, he didn't know what a gun was.

"Knife," Harry said, handing over a thirteen-inch blade with a silver handle. "If you can find anything else that isn't completely muggle, you can bring that too."

Draco tore the house apart, coming back up with a rope of twine, a cigarette lighter, and a pack of marbles, which he was about to put back, before Harry stopped him.

"Keep those."

"_Marbles_? Have you lost your..." Draco trailed off, deciding not to end that train of speech.

"You never know," Harry said nonchalantly. Draco grumbled, but shoved the shiny glass orbs in his pocket.

"Can we leave now?"

"Come on."

The twosome left the apartment, and Draco followed Harry silently through the crowded muggle streets. He felt like he was walking through a dream world. He didn't exactly remember where he was going, but there was a strong sense of deja vu running alongside him.

Finally, Harry stopped in front of a blackened heap of wood and metal. Draco's sharp nose picked out the smells of singed liquor. Walking forward, he discovered a large wooden plaque. Wiping off some of the smeared ashes, Draco peered at the letters carved into the wood.

****

The Leaky Cauldron

Swallowing hard, Draco dropped the plaque and backed away to a brick wall, where Harry was. Harry gave Draco a sad smile. Draco didn't know why, but he felt his eyes begin to burn, and he pretended to wipe his hands on his pants, so Harry wouldn't notice.

Harry was busy looking at the brick wall. Counting off some bricks, he located one, and punched it hard.

"Three up.... Two across," Draco muttered under his breath. Harry looked up.

"Right. So, you haven't forgotten everything."

Draco didn't answer, as Harry punched the brick again. He cursed as the rough surface of the brick scraped his knuckles roughly.

"Don't you need a wand for this?" Draco asked incredulously.

Harry glared at him, rubbing his knuckles and scowling at the wall. "This is the only entrance that Voldemort hasn't sealed completely. It's weakened over the years. See?"

He pointed to the grout surrounding the brick. Draco squatted down and squinted at it. The grout had cracked, and there was a faint yellow glow coming from behind the cracks.

"I see. Then why didn't you try this?" Draco took the long blade that Harry had given to him, grabbed the hilt, and slammed it into the brick.

The brick cracked further and yellow light seared through the cracks, blinding Draco. Pain shot through the knife, into his arms, and through his entire body. His eyes and nose ran like faucets, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming his anguish. Coppery blood flooded his mouth. With a grunt, he raised the hilt again, and smacked the brick again. The brick exploded, and the shards dissipated into terracotta dust.

Draco collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily. Harry looked at him for a moment.

"That's why I never tried that," he remarked. Draco would have glared at him, but he was suddenly too tired to lift his neck. He dropped into a faint.

About ten minutes later, he was brought around by Harry slapping him. "Wake up," Harry demanded, striking his left cheek. "Sleep later," he went on, hitting his right cheek.

When Draco came around enough, he lunged forward, balled his hands into fists, and punched Harry in the nose. Harry backed off, clutching his nose, which was now bleeding.

"Slap me again," Draco gasped, "and it'll be the last thing you ever do. You've been warned."

Harry gave him a death glare, trying to stop his nose from spurting blood. He pointed to the wall, which had now opened into an arch. Draco dragged himself off the ground with great haughtiness, and stalked through the gateway. Harry followed.

The archway closed after Harry. They looked around at the landscape. Draco was surprised to see that he was standing in an abandoned field of green slopes, colorful flowers, and tall trees. A babbling brook burbled contentedly to the left of them, curving around into a forest. The sunny sky was so bright; Draco had to shade his eyes. He was about to step forward, when Harry pulled him back.

"What's wrong now?" Draco asked, exasperated. Harry just sighed, and took a knife from the inside of his robes. Taking careful aim, he flung it at a tree to the left of them. The knife embedded in the wood, with a hollow, mechanical thlunking sound, like it was hacking into something metal. Draco frowned. That wasn't what a normal tree sounded like when something hit it.

There was a fizzing sound, and the knife was suddenly engulfed in yellow sparks. Draco watched in awe as the landscape around him was distorted and twisted into a swirl of colors. The soothing sounds of the stream, and the birds chirping slowed down and deepened until it sounded like a muggle computer game gone wrong. Then, the knife and the tree exploded, and the pretty scenery disappeared.

Draco was now standing on a gray platform. The sky was an intimidating shade of green and black, and the trees were barren. What was worse was outside the platform of which he and Harry were standing there was a large trench surrounding it, ten feet wide, and Draco couldn't tell how deep. It appeared bottomless.

"Watch where you step," Harry remarked airily.

"What the hell was that?" Draco asked.

"It was a simulator. Magical yes, but there has to be something to project the simulations. The fools. I've broken in here about ten times. You'd think you'd move the simulator. It's lucky they're so stupid."

Draco knew that he should feel angry about this; Harry was insulting his father. Instead, he felt very queer about the feelings of loyalty he felt he should have. They seemed twisted up and questioned until there was rather a sour taste left on Draco's tongue. Rather than mention this, Draco decided to let it go.

"How are we going to get across... this?" he asked instead.

Harry grinned toothily, but did not appear very happy. "Just don't look down," he said.

Draco was about to say he didn't understand, but Harry had abruptly turned and stepped out into the thin air. Words caught in Draco's throat when he realized that Harry was walking on the air. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, without looking down, for ten feet.

"Your turn," Harry called from the other side. Draco looked down at the pit, and swallowed.

"Dear God," he muttered, looking down, and about to step, when Harry's shrill voice broke in.

"_Don't look down!_" he cried. "You'll fall if you do!"

Making sure to look up at the sky, Draco took the first step. It was like walking against a resistance of some sort that kept his weight from falling down the gap. Breathing deeply, he kept on walking, until there was a giggle from below him. Reaction made him look down. As soon as he did, Draco realized his mistake. He plummeted.

Screaming as he fell, Draco managed to dig the knife from his pocket, and in an act of desperation, he thrust it into the wall.

The knife in the side of the cliff made him slow down a little bit, but not much. Eventually, he hit a layer of sandstone, stopping the knife. The hilt bumped and jiggled in his hand. Draco held on for dear life.

"Draco? Are you still there?" called Harry from the top of the cliff. Draco looked up, shielding his eyes from the bits of dirt and rock that fell from the bluff.

"Yeah, for the moment," he yelled back, feeling his muscles begin to burn. The giggle sounded again. Draco gritted his teeth angrily. It was that stupid noise that got him in this mess to begin with.

_"Come and play with me,"_ cooed a soft voice from the left of him. Whirling his head around, Draco nearly loosed the knife.

It was a ghost of a little girl. She was wearing a long, white robe, with silvery white hair that fell down to her waist. She giggled again, and lay a small palm on his shoulder. The coldness felt good against his tight, sweaty skin.

Draco's muscles burned, and he gasped with pain. The little girl smiled sweetly at him.

_"Come and play. Come and play forever...."_

The knife started to bend under Draco's weight.

_"And ever...."_

The sweat on his palms was making the metal hilt slip out of his hands.

_"And ever...."_

Harry yelled something, but Draco didn't hear him. He was staring into the little girl's eyes, which reminded him of a deep, dark well, drawing him into it's depths.

_"And ever,"_ the girl finished.

"Who are you?" Draco asked, exasperated.

_"Forever Fate,"_ the girl whispered.

Draco didn't know what Forever Fate was, and he was sure he really didn't want to know. Maybe it was death.

"Is... is it my time? So soon?" he whispered back, barely audible. The girl just giggled again, her hair waving in the air like it was in water.

_"Look for The Beginning. The Beginning of the End. Thee shall know when thy time has come, Draco Malfoy."_

"The Beginning of the End?! The Beginning of _what_ End? I don't understand!" Draco yelled at the apparition.

Forever Fate just giggled and disappeared into nothing. Draco was so intent on her leaving that he lost his grip on the knife.

_Thud._ About three feet from the knife, Draco flopped on something solid, and lay there, utterly confused by the events of the last ten minutes. It took a few seconds for Draco to register that he was on something solid, and not falling.

"MALFOY? ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?!" Harry bellowed from above.

"Yes. There's some sort of platform down here," Draco yelled back up.

"Can it hold my weight?" Harry called back. Draco looked down, jumped a few times on the stone that he was standing on before answering.

"I think so."

There was a swish, and Draco saw that Harry had embedded his own knife in the cliff, and slid down until he hit the sandstone bar. He let go of the knife, and fell the last three feet to the solid rock platform.

"Well? What now?" asked Draco. Harry was staring at an indentation in the rock. It looked a lot like a large arch in the cliff, with a stopper in it. It was obvious that there was a cave beyond the rock stopper.

"There's words here.." Harry mused, wiping the dust away. There were indeed, words etched in the stone.

__

Forever Fate welcomes you,

to The Beginning of the End.

Blessings go with,

and luck with the world you must mend.

Harry looked over at Draco. "What's Forever Fate?" Draco remembered the little girl, and thought it best not to answer truthfully.

The stone stopper shuddered into a groove, shedding small bits of rock and stone aside as it disappeared into the side of the wall.

"Where do you think it goes?" Draco asked. Harry shrugged.

"Only one way to find out." Taking out a flashlight, he flicked it on. It was a long, smooth tunnel, obviously not naturally made. The twosome started down the tunnel, silently.

# # #

Mr. Parkinson disliked having to talk to Mr. Malfoy and his Lord. For one thing, he hated to be looked down on and since Mr. Malfoy had been in Voldemort's inner circle, he got seniority.

"What do you want, Parkinson?" Mr. Malfoy asked, in a haughty tone. Mr. Parkinson bristled.

"Nothing," he remarked airily, "except for the fact that your son, and Harry Potter are _still alive_."

The color drained out of Mr. Malfoy's face, and Mr. Parkinson threw the paper at him, and stalked out. Normally, Mr. Malfoy would have been all over Mr. Parkinson for his insolent behavior, but decided to drop it for once. Snatching up the paper, he squinted at the picture.

It was indeed his son. Even from the distorted view, and the terrible muggle technology, he could still see Draco Malfoy looking at him. He slid into a chair, and looked at the paper.

He had always felt hurt when he thought of Draco, since his son - his own son! - had abandoned him. He knew that he might have been a little rash when it came to certain situations, but he had never dreamed it was that bad.

"Oh Draco..." he whispered to the person in the photograph. "Why?" Emotions came through, and abruptly, Mr. Malfoy shoved them away.

Standing up, he got back to business matters. The Lord needed to know that Harry Potter was still out and about. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a ring of keys, ticked some of them off, and went into his personal quarters.

Since he was one of Voldemort's right-hand men, he got several benefits. Personal servants at his every beck and call, power as he called upon it, and... his own personal messenger.

Unlocking the cage that hung at the far end of the room, he waited impatiently until a small, white being fluttered out. She had ghostly white skin, white wings, and long, white hair that went down to her toes. A Fairy of Air. Who could ask for a better messenger?

"Take this to the Lord," he demanded. "Pull anything funny, and your sisters are in for it."

The small fairy nodded sadly, and fluttered out the window.

Mr. Malfoy sighed, and sat on his bed, to think.

# # #

It had been about three hours of plodding along the stone cave, when Draco swore that if he had to take one more step, he was going to fall apart.

"It's not that much further," Harry panted. It was very stuffy in the cave, and the air was humid and hard to breathe. The flashlight that Harry had had gone out long ago, and they were now making do with the feeble flame of the cigarette lighter.

"You said it wasn't that much further an hour ago!" Draco proclaimed, making his feet go another step forward. "I don't want to-" He crashed into something hard.

Turning around and shining the flame of light on the wall in front of them, Draco saw that it was another stone stopper. Harry studied it intently for a moment. There was no writing to be found in this one, only a large crack. Harry smacked the crack with his open palm. The rock shattered.

Draco hoisted himself up out of the dark cave, rejoicing in the cold air that filled his lungs before he looked around.

They were in some sort of forest that looked distantly familiar to Draco, though he couldn't quite place a finger on it. Harry got out of the cave, and sighed.

"The Forbidden Forest," he said to Draco. Draco's jaw dropped. There was a clump of ferns in front of him. He ripped the ferns aside and looked up.

Hogwarts met his eyes. The stone seemed blacker, and the sky had an evil aura to it, but the castle was familiar. Surrounding the castle were hundreds of thousands of gray stone cottages, most of which had curls of smoke coming up from the chimney.

"That's where the wizards live," Harry explained. "I don't know quite how it works, but there is some sort of boundary that the occupants can't go past."

Draco just stared at his old school, disbelieving that this was real. Was his father here? Were all of his childhood friends here? His enemies?

Harry had started walking from the forest. Draco really had no choice but to follow. They walked in silence through the cobweb pattern of dirt streets connecting the houses. They stopped in front of one that was in the middle of one of the dusty, identical streets.

"Who lives here?" Draco asked. Harry looked at him from behind his contacts of silver eyes.

"The Weasleys, and Hermione," he said. Draco didn't have time to protest, because Harry rapped on the door.

It was a few seconds before someone answered. The wooden door squeaked open, and Mr. Weasley was standing there, in a robe of gray. He looked them tiredly over.

"Can I help you two?" he asked. Harry looked up at him.

"Let me in, Mr. Weasley. It's only me." Mr. Weasley didn't seem to get it, but he let Draco and Harry in anyway.

The door shut behind him, and Draco found that that air was almost as hard to breathe as it had been in the cave.

It was a two-room cabin. The room that they were standing in wasn't much to look at, but it had been scrubbed clean. The walls were stone, and wooden beams held up the thatch roof. A fireplace covered an entire wall, nearly, and a rough wooden table was in the center, with stools around it. There was an adjacent room with no door that had pallets on the floor.

By the fireplace, three women sat. Draco recognized two as Mrs. Weasley and Hermione Granger, but he couldn't put a finger on the third, but she seemed to be about four years old.

They were doing something quite odd. There was a ball of what looked like shimmering yarn, sitting by the little girl. She had something of a crocheting needle in her hands, and she was rapidly pulling and twisting the string until it was woven into one long braid-type pattern. Hermione took the strand that the little girl was weaving, and was weaving that thread together with another, already done ball of crochet braid. Mrs. Weasley was twisting that into yet another, thicker weave, making a shimmering rope about three inches thick of the 'yarn'. The three females looked up, but their fingers kept on twisting the yarn into thick ropes.

The little girl grinned at the two visitors, and Draco felt his breath catch. She looked exactly like Forever Fate had looked. She dropped her needle and waddled up to the two visitors, sucking her thumb. She stopped at Harry's feet, and pointed up.

"Harwy Potter," she proclaimed innocently. Hermione looked up from her work and gave something of a wane smile.

"Forgive her," she said. "She likes to imagine things. Nadine, come back."

Draco looked at the little girl, who was now looking at him. Forever Fate was Nadine? Then he shook his head. He probably just imagined the little girl anyhow.

"Dwaco Malfoy," Nadine went on to explain. Draco looked down at her, and Nadine smiled.

"Honey, come back," Hermione said. "You're bothering the visitors. Can we help you, sirs?"

Harry shot a glance at Draco, and then back at Nadine. He shook his head and addressed Hermione.

"Actually, Hermione-"--Hermione jumped at the mention of her name--"-your little girl's right. Some kind of guess, or Nadine here has a lot of Inner Eye."

There was silence. The Weasleys looked at Hermione, who looked at Harry. Nadine just giggled - the giggle sounding so much like Forever Fate's - and raised her arms up to Draco, as an order to be picked up. 

Draco stared at her for a moment, before Nadine smiled at him, and Draco felt himself melt. Bending over, he scooped up Nadine, and she grabbed his hat and waved it in the air.

"You're not Harry," Mrs. Weasley said weakly, voice cracking. "Harry died ten years ago..."

Harry sighed and reached for his forehead. Grabbing hold of the top of it, he slowly began to peel away some of the white paint. Everybody watched in stupefied disgustment, until Harry's scar showed through the paint.

"Harry?" breathed Hermione. "Harry, is it _really_ you?" Harry nodded slowly, and Hermione abruptly leapt up from her work, and enveloped Harry in a hug.

"Harry," she whispered into his shoulder. "Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry.... We thought you were dead..."

Draco stood, watching this scene with odd feelings. Finally, Hermione turned from Harry to face Draco. Draco involuntarily straightened, feeling awkward.

"Malfoy?" she asked. Draco wobbled slightly, took a deep breath, and then nodded. She looked at him oddly, and he sighed.

"What do you want? A birth certificate?" he snapped. Hermione looked slightly abashed. Sighing again, he brought a finger up to his eye, and took out one of his brown contacts, revealing their true color of steely gray.

Hermione looked at Draco for a moment, before slowly - very slowly - reaching around his body for an embrace. Draco stiffened.

"It's good that you're not dead either, I suppose," Hermione said, lukewarm tone to her voice. Draco snorted.

"That's nice," he said dryly. Hermione let him go.

"So, where's everybody else?" Harry asked. Mr. Weasley sighed.

"Bill, Percy, Ron, Fred, George and Charlie are working on developments to wizarding 'technology' they call it. Right now I think that they're trying to find a way to make a simulation without a simulator. Ginny is working at the castle."

"Why aren't you there?" Draco asked Hermione, hoping that she wouldn't take it personally. Luckily for him, she wasn't on one of her mood swings.

"My day off," she said simply. "We get one a month."

"Is Nadine yours?" Harry asked.

"Yes."

"Who's the father?"

Hermione flushed dark red, and her eyes became watery. "I'd rather not talk about that."

Draco looked at Nadine. She had long brown hair, and light blue eyes. She definitely wasn't a Weasley child.

"Tea?" asked Mrs. Weasley, who was pouring some light amber liquid into plain, white mugs.

"Yes, please," Harry said. It had been hot and damp in the caves, and it was hot and dry outside. "Something to drink would be very nice."

Mrs. Weasley gave him a watery smile and handed him a mug. The tea was quite good, flavored with spices and a bit of orange peel.

"What happened?" Draco asked. He flushed because the question wasn't very clear, but Mr. Weasley seemed to get what he had been aiming at.

"'Not sure, really," he said distantly, propping his head up against a fist. "All I remember was a green glow surrounding our house. It was actually your father." Draco tightened his grip around the mug.

"He did some sort of sleeping spell, and next thing I knew, we were here, along with Hermione," he motioned to Hermione, who had taken Nadine from Draco, and was bouncing her on her knee. "We were given duties the next day."

Harry, meanwhile, had been examining the yarn that the women had been crocheting a few seconds earlier. "What is this stuff?"

Mrs. Weasley shrugged. "We don't know. The Lord - err, You-Know-Who - gave each house a quota on how much rope we have to make per day. Now, what about you two? What kind of trouble have you been getting into for the last ten years?"

# # #

They conversed until seven-thirty that night, discussing the last ten years in length. Three pots of tea later, Hermione drew Harry and Draco aside.

"Will you do me a huge favor?" she whispered.

"Sure," Harry said in reply.

"You guys are leaving before eight, right?"

"Well, I suppose....."

"Can you take Nadine with you?"

"What?!"

Hermione waved her hands. "Shh! The inspector comes by at eight. Please take Nadine. She deserves better than this." she motioned with her hands at the small cabin.

Draco made a face. "Granger, my place is probably worse off than this... and Potter's practically homeless."

"Please? I'm asking you as a friend, an enemy, or whatever you want to think of it. I... I don't want to see her go, but she has a better chance at life in muggle London then she does here. Please?!"

Harry and Draco looked at each other uncertainly. "Hermione, we'll take her, but we don't know the first thing about raising kids..."

Hermione smiled, but tears were threatening to leave her eyes. "Thank you," she whispered, and went to go get Nadine ready.

"I suppose that this means I have to learn how to take care of a kid, on top of everything else? Potter, I don't think my salary as an _assassin_ is going to cover that," Draco said sarcastically. Harry didn't answer. Ten minutes later, Hermione came out of the back room, with Nadine bundled up in several cloths.

"...And Mummy loves you very much, she'll never forget you..." Hermione was saying to Nadine. Nadine either didn't have an idea of what was going on, or she didn't seem to care one iota.

Hermione looked at Harry and Draco. "Hurry. The night inspectors will be here any moment."

"Won't they notice that your little girl is gone?" asked Draco incredulously.

"I'll take care of that. _You_ had _better_ take good care of Nadine, or when I die I will haunt you 'till the end of time," she said warningly to him.

Harry nodded, and scooped up Nadine, and walked out the door. Draco followed, feeling awkward.

The sound of Hermione's muffled sobs followed them, making Draco shudder.

A/N: Well! We're almost done; this fic probably won't have more than one or two more chapters at the most. I love all my reviewers very much, *wink wink*. 

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: Err, everybody except for Forever Fate and Nadine belongs to J.K. Rowling, I believe.


	6. The Rise and Fall of the Dark

Life with Nadine was quite interesting, to say the least.

The moment they got in Draco's apartment, Draco and Harry discovered a large box of clothing, toys and other accessories, addressed to Nadine. There was no return address on the box. When Nadine saw the clothing, she just giggled, as if she knew who the gift-giver was, but had no intention of revealing the identity of the person.

Another thing about Nadine was her personality. She was very quiet, never complained about anything, and seemed to have this saintly air about her that held her above the rest of the world, but Nadine never said anything about this silent haughtiness of hers. Her favorite spot in the apartment was the kitchen countertop, where she could perch and survey the antics of the room at large.

About three days after they had returned from the wizarding world, Harry got up to get something to eat. As he walked towards the refrigerator, Nadine motioned him over.

"Milk, please," she whispered in his ear. Harry nodded, and opened the fridge, feeling the man-made coolness wash over his skin.

"Don't mind the pickles," Nadine said sagely. "They're old anyway."

Harry was rummaging through the contents of the fridge, and therefore wasn't really listening. "Mmmm," he said in an agreeing tone. Nadine, who knew that he wasn't hearing her, just sat quaintly and watched.

As Harry pushed aside a can of olives, his elbow scraped a jar of pickles accidentally. The glass jar toppled to the ground and shattered. Pickle juice went everywhere in a shower of green, along with the thick smell of mold. Harry looked at the mess on the floor and gaped at Nadine.

"The broom is in the closet!" Draco shouted from his duct-taped chair. He had made it clear that whatever mess Harry made, he wasn't cleaning it up.

"How did you know that I was going to knock over the jar of pickles?" Harry demanded. Nadine just hopped off the counter, her yellow sundress billowing behind her.

"Would you have knocked them over if I said anything?" Nadine countered, looking up at Harry with large, innocent blue eyes. Harry didn't say anything. Nadine tottered over to the closet and brought Harry the broom.

Three nights later, Draco chanced to wake up. Rolling over drowsily, he was quite startled to find that something was _glowing_ over the chair where Nadine slept. Reflex made him bolt upright in bed. Harry snored, muffling the sound of creaking bedsprings.

"Christine!" Nadine said sharply, sharper than Draco had ever heard her talk. "You can't keep on coming here _every night_! They're bound to wake up sooner or later."

The glow on the ceiling gave something of a patient sigh, and morphed slightly. _"Do you not like seeing me, Sister? Would_ _you rather I stayed away?"_

Nadine sighed, shaking her head so the brown pigtails that she slept in wobbled. "Don't be silly. I love seeing you, but it's not safe."

White power on the walls came forward and drew together in the form of a little girl that looked exactly like Nadine. The figure looked dimly familiar to Draco, but he couldn't think properly to remember names.

_"If you'd hurry up and _act _already, I could go to my rest. Haven't you Seen_ _it yet?"_

Nadine sighed unhappily. "Yes, I've Seen."

_"Then why haven't you acted yet?"_ asked the ghost, overly patient.

"Do you _actually think_ that I can get _them_ to listen to _me_? I'm not a ghost, like yourself, and I'm _four_ _years old_!" The pigtails started to shake in indignation again.

She sure has a wide vocabulary for a four-year-old, Draco thought absently.

_"It has been foretold,"_ the ghost snapped. _"Stop acting ridiculous, Nadine!"_

"I don't see how...." It was here that Nadine turned around and noticed Draco sitting up in bed, looking at the pair quizzically. She sighed in disdain. "I told you that somebody would notice, Chris."

The ghost looked up at Draco and snorted, as if this was just a mere setback. _"That can be fixed."_

Before Draco could react to anything, the ghost-girl - Christine? - caught and held his eyes in her own chalky white ones. Draco felt himself becoming lightheaded and sleepy. The world started blotting out in shades of black, white and gray. He fell back on his pillow, somewhere between unconsciousness and sleep. He would remember nothing the next morning.

# # #

The next morning commenced the same as the ones before it. Nadine seated herself on the countertop, regarding everything with her sharp eyes, while Draco and Harry milled about, making breakfast. There was silence, besides the scrape of spoons on bowls, and the rustle of Draco's newspaper. Nadine cleared her throat softly, and both men looked up at her.

"So," she whispered slyly, "when are we going back to save Mummy?"

Draco suddenly loosened his grip on the newspaper, and the sports section fell out and scattered all over the floor. Harry snorted and a lovely display of milk running out of his nose commenced.

"Err, Nadine, I don't think ever," Draco said shakily, bending over to pick up his fallen newspaper.

"Why not?" asked Nadine, wonderingly.

"Let's see," Harry said distantly, ticking things off of his fingers as he spoke, "Two wizard refugees and a four-year-old girl verses an army of Dark wizards. I don't think that that would work."

"That's why you start a _slave revolt_," Nadine said, slowly pulling the words out of her mouth, as if addressing someone smaller than herself. Draco put down his newspaper, and looked at Nadine oddly.

"How in the name of God do you _know_ all of this stuff?!" he demanded. "When I was four, I didn't know what a slave _was_, and I had no clue what a _revolt _had to do with _anything_!"

Harry nodded. "Yeah, I've met smart people in my time, but I don't even think that _Hermione_ was this smart at your age, and that's _saying_ something."

Nadine's ears turned slightly pink with the praise and the embarrassment it was giving her. Looking down at the floor, she knotted her fingers together behind her back.

"There's something that I haven't told you yet..."

"Obviously," Draco drawled snidely.

"Mummy told me of a prophecy made the day before I was born.... it was about twin girls. One was going to die at a young age.... and the other was going to be.... an Oracle," she whispered, so softly that it was barely audible. She suddenly found great interest in studying her palms.

Harry and Draco looked from each other, to Nadine and back to each other again. "An _Oracle_?!" Harry nearly yelled. "_You're _an _Oracle_?! There haven't been any _Oracles_ for.... for _centuries_!"

Draco, however, was more interested in the previous part. "A _twin_? Twin girls? You don't have a twin.... _do_ you?"

"I don't now. I _did_. Her name was Christine. She died about three years ago."

"How?" Harry asked, slightly irked that Hermione didn't bother to tell him that her daughter was an Oracle.

_"I think I can take it from here, Nadine,"_ a breath of a voice said from behind everybody. Harry's stomach turned to ice for a moment, before whirling around to face a girl that looked nearly exactly like Nadine, save that she was icily white, and her nose was set at a different tilt.

"_Forever Fate_?!"Draco asked, what little color he had in his face drained. He turned to Nadine. "You're related to _Forever Fate_?!"

__

Nadine's little eyebrows snapped together with a nearly audible click when she turned to face the ghost, who was now giggling. "Christine...."

__

"Oh, I couldn't resist. It was too easy," she snickered, looking over at Draco.

__

"What's going on?" asked Harry, who was completely lost in this train of conversation.

__

"Remember the day I fell down into that pit?" asked Draco, his eyes never leaving the ghost, who was floating in the air mockingly. "The reason why I fell was because I heard someone laughing. It was_ her_."

__

"She was always making up mystic names for herself," Nadine said, rolling her eyes. "Forever Fate was her favorite. She refused to answer to anything else for a month."

__

Draco's jaw dropped and he whirled around to face 'Forever Fate'. "If you were in the living," he gasped in fury; "I would beat you." Christine made puppy eyes and batted her eyelashes at him playfully.

__

"Would you really?" she simpered sweetly.

"Chris, just get on with it," Nadine ordered.

__

"She was always the down-to-earth one, if you didn't already notice," Christine muttered, looking over at her sister grudgingly. _"Anyway, we weren't supposed to be born at all. Since he already had a daughter, Father said that..."_

"Who's your father?" Harry asked. "Hermione said that she didn't want to tell us." The ghost looked slightly miffed at being interrupted, but then she sighed.

__

"Roger Parkinson," she explained with too much patience. At everybody's disgusted at shocked looks, she shook her head. _"If you must know the details,"_ she spat tartly, _"it was rape."_

"No wonder Granger didn't want to talk about it," Draco said thoughtfully. "It's not exactly something to be proud of."

__

"As I was saying_,"_ the ghost went on impatiently, _"Father said that unless we were boys that could carry on the family line, we were to be exterminated. As you can tell, we are female, so we were to be killed."_

Draco and Harry shot sidelong glances at each other and Nadine, who was looking out the window distantly.

__

"Mummy heard about this, and tried to hide us. She succeeded with Nadine, but the birth records of myself were found a year after I - we, were born. So, I was killed. As far as the Dark wizards know, Nadine Parkinson doesn't exist."

"How do you know all of this?" asked Harry, drumming his fingers on the table. "You were only one year old when all of this happened."

__

"I didn't know when I was a mere human_," _Christine said haughtily. _"When you become a ghost, you know _everything_."_

"Glad to see you're so modest," Draco muttered under his breath.

__

Christine smiled, showing misty white teeth. _"You should be."_

"So," Harry said, cutting in. "What do you want from us?"

__

"We want you to help us," Nadine said in her very mature, steady voice. "We need you to rouse the wizarding population. Do you think that a group of adults is going to listen to a four-year-old and a ghost that's been dead for three years?"

__

Harry's jaw dropped slightly. There is no way in hell this girl's only four, he thought raggedly. No way. She's so... adult.

__

"What do you want us to do?" asked Draco wearily. Nadine yelped with happiness, the way a normal four-year-old would. Running up to Draco, she threw her arms around her waist and buried her head in his hip.

"I knew that you would help!" she squealed.

__

Christine smiled her own smile, and addressed Harry. _"Meet me and the others in the wizarding world, in that cave that I made, tomorrow at six at night,"_ she ordered. _"I'll take care of everything else."_ With that, she swirled into nothingness, and was gone.

"What have we gotten ourselves into _this_ time?" asked Draco, trying to peel Nadine off him. Harry just shook his head and shrugged. He had no idea.

# # #

Draco led the way to the wizarding world the next day, with Harry and Nadine in tow. This time they didn't have to dye their hair or use body paint to hide themselves, because Christine distinctly told them not to wear disguises. 

The sun was setting, sending ominous streaks of scarlet across a purple, velvet appearing sky. 

London seemed eerily silent, for London. The birds were quiet, the traffic was sparse, and there was hardly another soul out on the road. Speaking seemed a crime, so nobody did.

Emotions tangled within each other in the pit of Draco's stomach. One minute he felt sick to his stomach, and the next he was excited and enthralled. They were going to start a revolt. This was probably going to be a highlight of the week.

When they made it to the Leaky Cauldron, or rather, what remained of it, Harry rapped on the brick, and the archway opened.

In the wizarding world, the simulator wasn't on. Draco wondered why, but then saw that it had melted on the ground.

"Christine?" asked Harry, looking down at Nadine. Nadine nodded quietly.

Instead of having to scale the bluff, there was something of a makeshift bridge over the bottomless pit. That meant that a tree had fallen over, and they shuffled carefully over it, to the platform with the cave entrance.

When they entered the cavern opening, Draco and Harry nearly fell over. Instead of the long, snaky passageway it had been before, it was now a large, echoing chamber, and it was filled with confused people.

When the people noticed the two cloaked figures and the little girl standing there, all was silent.

"Are you the two hooligans that hypnotized us?!" a man asked irately. Several other voices chimed in.

"I have no _time_ for this!"

"The Lord is going to skin us all!"

"Who _are_ you, anyhow?"

At the last remark, Harry took center stage. Doing what he does best, Draco thought hotly.

Harry removed his hat and sunglasses, and the crowd fell silent again. Scanning the room with eyes that glinted like green ice, he spoke.

"I am Harry Potter," he said quietly, although there was no need to announce that fact, as the crowd knew already. His whisper bounced off the walls to echo a thousand times, and to enter a thousand ears.

"What are you doing here?" asked a female voice.

"To start a revolt."

"Are you coming to save us?" inquired a hopeful-sounding voice.

Draco walked up next to Harry. "No," he said gruffly. "You're going to save yourselves."

"Who are you?" asked a voice that Draco recognized as Penelope Clearwater. Draco sighed and removed his own hat and sunglasses.

There was silence so thick that you could slice it with a knife. Draco winced, feeling eyes regarding him with a mixture of dislike and curiosity.

"He's not with his father," Harry assured the crowd. "Honestly, he isn't. He's here to help us."

Some muttering ran through the crowd, along with some grumbling, but there were no cries for his head, so Draco thought that he was standing on semi-firm ground - at the moment.

"I'm not much of a motivational speaker, Potter," Draco said out of the side of his mouth. "Besides, I think that they'd listen to you better."

"Thanks a lot," Harry snapped. Draco grinned toothily.

The crowd had fallen silent again, and Harry scanned everybody's solemn faces. He bit his lip. What am I supposed to say to these people? he asked himself.

"As of right now," he said uncertainly, "you are no longer servants or slaves to the Dark Lord." People's ears perked up, and Harry gained courage, and began speaking louder.

"You are members of... of...Trav!" he bellowed, making this up as he went. "The Resistance Against Voldemort!" Chest heaving, he pointed to various people in the crowd, and kept on yelling.

"You have suffered long enough in the shadows of Darkness! Let us end this Dark period, if not for yourself, then for your children, and their children, and the children after that! We will not cower under Voldemort forever! Who is with me?"

It was a small murmur at once. It grew louder, and louder, and louder, until finally the entire group was beating their fists, stomping their feet, and screaming at the top of their lungs, "TRAV! TRAV! TRAV!"

Harry lowered his own fist, and stared out at the raving mass of people. "Did I do that?" he whispered to himself.

Draco snorted with a bit of laughter, and clapped Harry on the shoulder. "Well done, Potter."

# # #

Meanwhile, all of the Dark wizards had gathered in Hogwarts's Great Hall (now a very large conference hall) to discuss the recent relevation that Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter were still alive.

"He's your son, Malfoy," Macnair barked at Mr. Malfoy. "Why the hell did you let him run away?!"

Mr. Malfoy stood up so suddenly that he knocked his chair over. The wood skidded across the tile floor, scraping and making quite a racket. "Macnair, I swear, shut your mouth or I'm going to have your tongue cut out," he hissed angrily.

Macnair opened his mouth to protest, but then decided against it, as Mr. Malfoy probably_ could_ have that done to his tongue if he wished.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," came a smooth voice from the head of the table. Macnair sat down resentfully, and Mr. Malfoy picked up his chair and righted it.

The voice belonged to a male, looking about forty, with black hair and even darker eyes. His body glowed green; showing that it was prosthetic.

"I'm sure all we have to do is wait, and Harry Potter-"--his face grew hungry--"-and Mr. Malfoy will return if we give them all enough time..."

"Sire! Sire!" a runner yelled, sprinting in, and nearly collapsing on the floor.

"What is it, Boy?" asked Voldemort. The boy cowered, refusing to look the Dark Lord in the eyes.

"They're gone!" he panted. Voldemort looked at him, eyebrows arched.

"_Who_ is gone?" he inquired severely.

"_Everybody_!" the youth cried. "All of the other wizards and witches!"

Voldemort shoved away from the table quickly, and leapt to his feet, wincing because he wasn't quite used to having legs yet.

"How recent was this discovery made?" he asked in a dangerous, low voice.

"Seven-thirty," the boy said meekly. "We - or at least I - don't know how long they've been gone."

Voldemort dug his fingers into the table, drawing up splinters in stony silence. "I want search parties," he snapped abruptly. "I don't care what you do, but I want this entire area combed. Leave no rock unturned!" Voldemort turned to the boy. "Are the professors still here?"

"Yes, Sire," the runner answered promptly. "They are still in the dungeons."

"Be off with you," Voldemort ordered. The runner left, possibly faster than he came into the room. The occupants of the High Table stared at him, until he glared down at them all.

"What are you waiting for?" Voldemort demanded, staring at his subjects. "Get out there and _search_!" They obeyed.

# # #

Harry had done a very good job at rousing the crowd. They were ready for tomorrow, and heading back to their homes to look for weapons. Christine floated down, startling many of the wizards.

_"I wouldn't recommend going back to you homes,"_ she advised. _"Lord Voldemort knows that you have gone, and has the entire population of Dark Wizards looking for you."_

There was an alarmed sweep of noise that went through the crowd when they heard that relevation. How were they going to create a revolt without any weapons to fight with?

"Excuse me," Nadine said softly, sitting in her mother's lap. Everybody, oddly, was quiet for the little girl to speak.

Nadine rose to her feet, and spread her hands. "I have an idea." People chuckled. Nadine glared at them. "Even Dark wizards have to sleep. Why don't you send out a small party to gather weapons late tonight?"

There was another murmur, but this time a murmur of agreement. This small girl had a head on her shoulders.

"But won't they have sentries?" asked Lavender Brown, doubtfully. Christina floated down.

_"I can take care of that,"_ she whispered silkily. _"I was able to hypnotize you into coming here. I will be able to put small amounts of sentries to sleep."_

"Wait a minute," Seamus Finnigan said, rubbing his chin. "Couldn't you just hypnotize the Dark wizards into killing themselves, or something?" When he said that, Draco flinched. His father was one of those Dark wizards, and Draco would rather him not be killed.

Christina smiled. _"Nope. I can help, but you have to fight your _own_ wars,"_ she said superiorly.

There was some grumbling about this, but nothing serious. Harry stood up. "I suggest that we all get some sleep. All that would like to go hunt for weapons, please raise your hands." About fifty people volunteered. Harry nodded.

"I'll call for you around three in the morning. Sleep well, everybody else. Tomorrow is a day that will determine history." There was some shuffling as everybody settled down on the hard rock. Draco was talking to Christine.

"Where are all of the professors at?"

_"In the school."_

"Why?"

_"Voldemort wanted the teachers to join him, and everybody refused. So, the Dark Lord said that they would languish in the dungeons until they would fight for him."_

"They've been down there for _ten years_?!" Draco asked, disbelievingly.

_"Seems that way,"_ Christine replied pertly.

Draco called Harry over.

"Look. I have an idea."

"That's a first," Harry drawled sarcastically.

"Shut your trap. This is serious. The teachers are imprisoned within Hogwarts."

Harry's jaw dropped, but allowed Draco to continue.

"You can lead the sorry excuse for troops we have in battle, and I'll go free the teachers. Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone, and I can do something to Hogwarts. We have more than they do; they'd be doomed." He was tracing a finger on his palm while speaking, as if drawing out a battle plan.

Harry puffed out his cheeks in thought, and then finally nodded. "Sounds good. The teachers will help. Get some sleep, Draco. We have a very long day tomorrow."

Rather surprised by the usage of his first name, Draco leaned against the walls of the cave and struggled to get comfortable. He couldn't, but finally exhaustion took over, and he slumped into a dreamless slumber, mind racing about tomorrow.

# # #

"Harry... Harry.... time to wake up," came a female voice. A sweet scent filled his nostrils, making him inhale deeply. Cinnamon and lemon peel. Then he remembered that he had a war to fight today. His eyes popped open, and they came face-to-face with a smiling, but trembling Ginny Weasley, who held a mug of tea.

"Drink up," the redhead ordered. "You have a long day today."

Harry grasped the mug and gulped the tea, gasping as it burned down his throat. Ginny wrinkled her nose at him.

"Don't swallow so fast," she scolded softly. "You'll hurt your esophagus. Hungry?" she asked, motioning to a large plate of biscuits. The thought of food made his stomach turn over, so he shook his head.

The fire that had been burning in the middle of the cave for warmth was out, so Harry walked over, grabbed a stick of burnt wood, and began sketching out a rough design of Hogwarts on the wall. When he was done, he started making little x's to represent his Trav army.

When he was done, he called the groups to attention. "Here's the battle plans, so listen up!" Harry called, smacking his stick on the wall to make noise. Everyone fell silent, even the small children.

"We're going to make a semi-circle around Hogwarts, on the side of the greenhouses-"--he made a motion towards several squares representing the greenhouses--"-so we're facing with our backs towards the sun. They have better resources, and they have better use of magic, so I'm hoping that fighting this way will throw off their aim. Some of them will undoubtedly come down for land combat... what kind of weapons do we have, anyway?" he asked, changing the subject.

There were pots, pans, knives, all sorts of kitchen utensils, a few hammers, fire pokers, sticks of wood of all sizes, and children's toys such as baseball bats and jump ropes. Knitting needles, the needles that they used to crochet that strange rope were also there. Bits of rope and chain, a whip that somebody had found dotted the pile sparsely. There was even a broken wand. Harry sighed. It wasn't the greatest assortment of weapons in the world, but it would have to do. 

"Don't we have any projectile weapons?" Harry asked.

Neville's grandmother, Mrs. Longbottom, scratched her head and spoke. "When I was a little girl, we shredded old garments to make slings. We might be able to do that."

Harry nodded. "Those with the strongest arms should man the slings." Even before he spoke some people were shredding a blanket that somebody had had.

"Percy," Harry suddenly said. "I need Percy Weasley."

A very surprised looked Percy answered. "Yes, Harry?"

"I appoint you commander of the slingers," he said. Percy puffed up. Harry grinned. Even after ten years, he knew that Percy would still have some of his old, leading attitude somewhere left in him.

"Malfoy," Harry whispered. "I think that we can cause enough din for you to slip in unnoticed. I suggest that you take a hammer, so you can bust through doors." Draco nodded, and then slipped through the crowd to grab one before they were all taken.

"Are we ready?" Harry bellowed, feeling excitement rise into the tips of his fingers. The feeling tingled, and he felt like he could fly out of his body. "Any questions? Let's go!"

They burst out of the huge cave, marching into the sunshine. It was going to be a bright, sunny day. The air was fresh and sweet, and a breeze ruffled Harry's hair. It seemed too nice of a day to fight a war that was sure to be bloody, Harry sighed.

"Trav! Trav! Trav! Down with Voldemort! Trav! Trav! Trav!" The troops started chanting, churning the grass into the mud as they marched.

Dear God, Harry though in silent prayer. I don't know if this is how this is supposed to work, but I'm doing it the only way I know how.

There were sentries watching the land for dangers. One of them happened to be the runner from yesterday. You can imagine the turmoil that occurred when they saw the Trav army marching towards them.

"Alert the Lord!" one of them called.

"We've got to attack!" shouted another.

The runner boy just ran in, whether to alert the Lord, or just to get away he didn't know.

Back on the ground, Percy was ordering the slingers about. "First row!" he barked. "Shoot!" a battering of about fifty stones hit the castle, some of them breaking windows, some of them bouncing off the castle wall, and some hitting sentries.

"First row! Back and load behind Third row! Second row! Aim and shoot!" he demanded. Harry smiled listening to this. Percy had been an annoying prefect and Head Boy, but he was a good army general.

The rest of Trav waited quietly, clutching weapons like security blankets. Harry took a shuddering breath. The tension was so thick he could barely stand it.

Finally, the door burst open, and about five hundred black-robed men and women with wands came out. The moment of truth had come.

"First row!" Harry dimly heard Percy shout. "Aim at the wizards and shoot!" There was the sound of zinging stones, and the sounds of the stones thlunking into the backs of people's heads.

Harry gripped his pot and dealt a redheaded Dark wizard a nasty whack on the back of the head. It opened a large gash in the woman's head, and crimson liquid gushed out, dowsing both Harry and the woman. She dropped her wand and screamed, covering her wound with both hands. She coughed, and blood came up. She collapsed. 

Bile had rose in Harry's throat, and he had to swallow several times to keep from vomiting up his tea. He dropped the pot and grabbed the wand instead. Harry looked at it curiously. He hadn't held a wand in so long...

"Harry!" screamed a voice that he couldn't recognize. "Behind you!"

Instead of turning around, Harry sideskipped and narrowly missed having a knife thrust in his back by a Dark wizard.

"So, after ten years, I get to meet with the Famous Harry Potter once again," came a smooth voice.

Harry whirled around and came face to face with Voldemort. The entire world seemed to stop spinning for a moment, and the yells of war seemed to die down. Anger rose, so hot that Harry could taste it.

"You _scum_," he breathed. "You _filthy_, _cheating_, _spineless_..." Harry was so angry that he couldn't find the right words to describe what he wanted to call Voldemort. "This is all _your fault_."

Voldemort actually looked quite amused. "_I'm_ not the one that came up with your - what was it called? - Trav."

"If you weren't so _power obsessed_, this wouldn't have happened in the FIRST PLACE!" Harry screamed, his temper getting the better of him. "LORD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL WHEN I FINISH WITH_ YOU_!"

"Look at me, aren't I scared," Voldemort said coolly. "Your word games have no effect on me, Potter."

A very red-faced Lee Jordan suddenly tackled Voldemort to the ground. "Harry, Harry, run!" he called.

Harry was about to protest, when a sudden thought came to him. If I run, he thought, he'll come after me, and he can't kill anyone if he isn't here....

Harry ran.

# # #

While all of this was going on, Draco had managed to sneak in the large double doors of the castle while the Dark wizards ran out.

Hogwarts was much like he remembered it. It was a little more shadowed, and lacked the cheerful air it had ten years ago, but it was still his old school. Draco slunk off into a corner, trying to remember where the dungeons were.

"Potion class," he whispered, trying to make an image of it in his mind. "Where was Snape's class?" He was having a very hard time thinking, with his heart hammering in his throat and his head throbbing as if he had hit himself over the head with his mallet.

"Halt!" a voice called from behind him. Draco's body turned to ice, and he nearly vomited. "Identify yourself!"

Once he had gotten his bodily functions back under control, he dimly noticed that the someone was holding a wand to the back of his neck. Gripping his mallet tightly, he decided to play a little trickery. This person sounded gullible.

"Put that wand down," he thundered, "or I'll see to it that your head is hanging from a pike on top of the castle!"

The person behind him squeaked and dropped the wand. "I'm so sorry, Master Malfoy... It was an accident! Please don't cut off my head!" he whimpered pitifully.

Draco grinned wolfishly. So, being a direct carbon copy of his father _did_ have some advantages, after all.

Whirling around, he sneered at the black-haired youth as viciously as he could. He hadn't sneered in a long time. It felt good. "Take me to the dungeons, _now_, and maybe I'll only have your hands severed," he said as viciously agreeable as he could manage. 

The boy gave something of a strangled sob and nodded, while wiping a hand across his eyes. "Yes, Sir," he whispered.

"Stop that blubbering!" Draco ordered, enjoying this newfound power by becoming his father. The youth nodded again, snuffled a little bit, and started leading Draco down a hidden hallway. 

# # #

Harry sprinted across the now barren land of the wizarding world, jumping over fallen logs, and every now and then looking behind him to make sure that Voldemort was still following him.

He was indeed, and he was making good time for a forty-year-old that was trying to catch a twenty-seven year old. For Harry's advantage, however, Voldemort still wasn't completely used to his new body, and he had to walk around things that Harry could jump over, and he stumbled over his own feet a lot.

"I forgot how big the wizarding world was," he gasped to himself. Harry was in good shape, but he wasn't built for sprinting long distances.

It was then he realized that he still held a wand in his left hand. Switching it to his right, he stared at it. What good was it going to do him if he couldn't remember any spells?

Something hot and stinging punctured his calf, and came out the other end. He fell to the ground screaming, and sweating in pain. Raising his head, he looked down to see that there was an arrow sticking out of his leg. 

"Damnit," he whispered, whimpering in pain. "Damnit, damnit damnit!" Voldemort advanced, and blood spewed out of Harry's leg like a grotesque geyser. He was starting to feel lightheaded from the loss of blood.

Ten minutes later, Voldemort came upon a very sweaty Harry Potter, completely drenched in his own blood. Voldemort smirked down at him.

# # #

__

"NO!" she cried, banging on the barrier with all of her ghostly strength. "NO NO NO NO NO!" she screamed.

# # #

"Well well well," Voldemort said tauntingly. "Nice try." Harry didn't say anything in response. The pain from his calf seemed to scorch at every nerve in his body, and it didn't seem worth it to speak.

# # #

__

"Please!" she wailed. "Let me through!" Whispers commenced all over the strange place, each one echoing.

# # #

"It took twenty-seven years, but the Legend of Harry Potter has come to a close. Well, the Legend of the _living_ Harry Potter, that is," Voldemort mused. Harry sighed. Being a dead legend didn't seem so bad, really.

# # #

__

"Conference," the whispers whispered. "We need a conference."

"We have no TIME for a conference!" she pleaded. "Please!"

# # #

"Good-bye, Harry," Voldemort said, raising his wand. Harry shut his eyes and sighed. He felt no more that sad disdain that his life was going to end so soon. It was too bad. There had been so much that he wanted to do, and now would never get to.

# # #

__

She banged one more time on the barrier, and it gave way. She fell; fell fell fell down to the ground, screaming her triumph and emotion as the world spinned beneath her in a display of vibrant color.

# # #

The wand erupted in a brilliant display of purples and greens, knocking Harry's body back like a limp puppet on a string. He died swiftly.

# # #

__

Harry awoke in a spinning black place. It took a few moments to realize that he was dead. He felt a bit alarmed, but otherwise okay. He scanned the black place, wondering where he was.

"Harry," came a distant voice. Many other voices took up the chant. "Harry, Harry, Harry..."

Harry turned around, and looked behind him. A white ghost of a woman was smiling sadly at him. He squinted at her.

"Mum?" he finally asked.

# # #

Voldemort looked at Harry's limp body and started to laugh.

# # #

__

The laughing of Voldemort rang in Harry's ears. The ghost of Lily Potter smiled at her son, before shaking her head. Her lips moved, but Harry couldn't hear what she was saying. Soon, he felt overly floaty, and the black started to blur together. Lily sauntered over and the two shared a ghostly embrace, before Harry Potter disappeared from the Land of the Dead. 

# # #

Harry Potter opened his eyes groggily, feeling like he was having the worst hangover in his life. Voldemort was still standing there, laughing over his 'dead' body. Harry shook his head to clear it, and touched his injured leg. It was no longer bloody, but it felt scabbed over.

Opening his eyes, he soon noticed that the wand was still beside him. The numb feeling started to burn away as anger entered his veins again.

"YARRRRRRR!" Harry cried, launching himself from the ground and leaping on a very befuddled Voldemort.

The two tussled on the ground for about five minutes - enough time to leave Harry with two black eyes and Voldemort was a broken nose - before Harry grabbed his wand, and started beating Voldemort over the head with it. He knew that this wasn't exactly proper usage of a wand, but he didn't remember any spells. This actually was a pretty good battle plan, because Voldemort could guard against magical assaults. He was having a hard time fending off blows to the head with a stick. 

"Get _off of me_!" Voldemort roared, trying to throw Harry off. Harry kept on whacking with his wand, hoping something drastic would happen soon.

There was a splintery snap, and the wand broke in two from all of the pressure. Little white specks flew all over, getting in Voldemort's eyes. He yelped with pain and tried to claw the white substance out of his eyes.

Harry's eyes burned with tears. _This_ was the scum that had killed his parents... he screamed with anticipation and anger and agony all in the same roar.

The half of the wand that Harry still held in his hand was sharp... very sharp... In a split second's decision, he gripped the end of the wand like he would do to a knife, and drove it like a stake into Voldemort's chest. 

Voldemort stopped struggling, but his body spasmed once... twice... three times, and his black eyes gained a glossy sheen to them. A vein exploded in his eye, turning the whites of the eye a light pink. He grasped frantically at the stick that was lodged in his chest, while staring at Harry with his good eye. Green ooze - Harry supposed that it was blood of some sort - sprayed from Voldemort's chest. Taking a last, rattling breath, he collapsed to the ground, dead.

Harry looked at the dead body of Voldemort, and his green blood that mixed with Harry's own blood staining the ground. His stomach rolled, and what little he had for breakfast that day came up.

# # #

Draco followed the youth down the hallways of the castle, wishing that he would hurry up. The boy stopped by an iron door, and tapped it with his wand. The door swung open.

Inside of the metal door was a long, cavernous corridor, with iron doors lining the walls. Water dripped steadily down from a stalactite on the ceiling, creating an eerie plinking noise in the dark. A single torch burned steadily on the far wall.

"Tell me, Boy," Draco growled in the most menacing voice that he could find, "which door are the professors behind? The Lord-"--Draco shuddered--"-wants to see them."

His guide pointed noiselessly to the door closest to them. Draco nodded at it. "Open it, now." The boy obeyed.

It was very dark inside the large cell, and musty. It took about five minutes for Draco's eyes to adjust. Seated there, along the walls, were all of the professors. Some of them Draco remembered others he didn't.

"Go away, Malfoy," a shrill woman's voice called from the left. "You know what our answer is, and you know what to do to it."

Draco sighed. So, this wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. Taking his mallet, he hit the boy over the head with it, so he wouldn't have to deal with any annoyances. The teachers were silent.

"What is going on?" asked a voice that Draco recognized as Professor McGonagall. Draco walked over to her and shook his head.

"There's a war going on outside, if you haven't noticed," he said airily. "Would you care to join?"

"If we have to fight for _you_," Professor Sprout spat, "I'd rather eat my own foot." Draco laughed without humor.

"Right. Well, then. Perhaps I should introduce myself, and then you might want to change your minds. Does the name _Draco_ Malfoy ring a bell?"

There was silence.

"Would you like to come help me and Harry Potter?" he asked, overly polite. 

More silence.

"YES OR NO?" he yelled, getting impatient.

There was silence briefly, before there was shuffling to stand up. "Just show us the way!" somebody said, sounding very cold.

Draco grinned, feeling very relieved. "Let's go, then."

They trudged through the school, until the small party of rebels was at the front door. It was here that Professor Snape drew Draco aside.

"The rest of you go on," Snape ordered. "We have something else to do." The other twenty or so people nodded, and filed out the door.

"What do you want?" Draco asked, impatient to get to the fighting again. Snape looked at him through cold, emotionless eyes. They unnerved Draco. It looked like something of him had died in that cell.

He started walking, and Draco followed, until they were in a closed off corridor. Snape opened the door, and Draco nearly fell over.

It was filled with those ropes that he had seen Hermione, Mrs. Weasley and Nadine working on when he had first come here. They shimmered eerily, as if daring anyone to touch them.

"What are they?" asked Draco, reaching out to finger one of the ropes, and then yanking his hand back.

"Essence of Voldemort," Snape sighed. "They help to keep him alive. It's kind of like storing unicorn blood, in a way. Even if his body is dead, his spirit can live on in these ropes." Draco shuddered.

"What are we supposed to do with them?" he asked. Snape smiled, and Draco recognized it as the smile he used to use before taking points away from Gryffindor.

"Destroy them," he whispered, grabbing a torch that was stationed on the wall. Draco grinned, realizing just how much he had missed Professor Snape.

# # #

Since both of the leaders of Trav had gone, Percy appointed himself leader of the remaining troops. It was a costly battle. Both sides had lost many fighters, but since Trav had more people, it looked as if they were winning, if you could call any aspect of war 'winning'.

"Circle them!" Percy bellowed. The Trav fighters formed a circle around the remaining Dark wizards, and started falling in tighter and tighter, looking like a demented Anaconda of people.

After about five more minutes of this, Percy was starting to doubt his decision. While they were outnumbered, the Dark wizards seemed to have quite a bit of life left in them, and the circle formation made Trav easier to hit. He sighed as a spear bit into his thigh. There was a sudden battle cry from above.

The teachers came hurtling down a hill, all armed with wands from dead Dark wizards. They immediately started into the mob, taking down wizards with single wand swipes.

# # #

As Draco burned down the ropes, he could hear Voldemort talking to him in his head.

"What are you doing, Draco? I could give you anything you want, Draco. Wealth, a home, a family... your father..."

At the mention of his father, Draco stopped with the torch and cringed.

"Yes, Draco... your father is still alive..."

Draco slammed the thoughts out of his mind, and stuck the flame into a coil of rope. It instantly exploded into a crimson flame.

"Leave me _alone_!" he snarled viciously to the ropes. "You have caused enough problems in my life.."

"Problems?" went the voice. "I haven't caused you any problems.... you did them all yourself..."

"LIAR!" Draco shouted, the shout echoing as he set fire to another piece of rope.

"Would I lie to the son of one of my advisors?" Voldemort went on.

"YES!" Draco yelled, swinging the torch to a wall of rope. The voice was getting fainter. That was a good sign, thought Draco as sweat rolled down his body.

"I wasn't the one that made you run away..." Voldemort said, as another rope crinkled into ash.

"IT WAS _BECAUSE_ OF YOU I RAN AWAY!" Draco thundered as the last rope exploded into flame. The voice was reduced to little more than a breeze of a whisper, and then was nothing.

Voldemort was gone.

# # #

The 'Anaconda' of people wrapped tighter and tighter around the small group of people that was the Dark army. The battle was dwindling down. It was nearing seven at night, and everyone was tiring after nearly twelve hours of battle. The Dark wizards were getting that it was senseless to keep fighting, but decided that they would go down swinging if they had to go down at all.

Professor McGonagall ended it all, losing her temper.

"_Magnum Colosivitz_!" she bellowed. A large black cloud erupted from the end of her wand, enshrouding everyone.

When the cloud dissipated, the fifteen remaining Dark wizards had died, and Professor McGonagall had fainted from the effort. There was silence for a moment. Trav had defeated the Dark wizards. A unanimous cheer rose through the crowd.

Draco, meanwhile, was frantically searching through the bodies of the Dark wizards for his father. He found him on the banks of the lake. Draco leaned over and felt for a pulse. There was none. He leaned back and looked at his father. He appeared to be merely sleeping. 

Harry had just staggered back from the fields where he had been, and saw Draco looking at the body of his father. He stumbled over there and touched his shoulder.

"Malfoy?" he panted, "are you-"

"I'm fine," Draco snapped, cutting him off, and shaking the hand off his shoulder. He felt no sadness, just an immense coldness that seemed to have swallowed his body up whole. "Just fine." He walked off.

# # #

Nadine Granger sat down on her bed. Like most ten-year-olds, she liked to play with her friends, and Luanne Bell had just left. Nadine liked Luanne, but she was glad that her friend had left, and now she could be alone.

Walking over to her radio, she fiddled with the knobs that controlled the stations, until she found a song that suited her.

__

A long, long time ago... I can still remember, how that music.... used to make me smile... and I knew that if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance... and maybe they'd be happy... for a while...

Nadine was rather fond of this song. It told a story of the past, even if it _was_ a muggle story, and even if it _was_ American.

__

But February made me shiver.... with ever paper I delivered... bad news on the doorstep... I couldn't take... one more step...

There was a knock at the door.

_I can't remember if I cried.... when I read about his widowed bride.... but something touched me deep inside... the day... the music... died..._

"Come in," Nadine said, not bothering to turn down the music. Her mother came in.

_I started singin... bye-bye Miss American Pie.... drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry... and good ol' boys were drinking whisky and rye... singing this'll be the day that I die... this'll be the day that I die..._

To Nadine, her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. The average person wouldn't think so. Although she was only thirty-two, she had white hairs, wrinkles, and wasn't very slim. But she had been thorough a lot, and Nadine though that she was beautiful on the inside more than on the out. Hermione Granger smiled at her daughter.

"Thinking deep thoughts again, Sugarplum?" she asked her daughter tiredly.

__

Did you write the book of love, and do you have faith in God above.... if the Bible tells you so? And do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul? And... can you teach me how to dance... real slow?

"Do I do anything else?" Nadine asked, answering a question with a question, like always. Hermione smiled at her daughter and sat on the bed.

__

Well, I know that you're in love with him, cause I saw you dancin in the gym.... you both kicked off your shoes.... man, I dig those rythemy blues!

Nadine climbed in her mother's lap, and tucked the crown of her head under Hermione's chin. "I was actually thinking about... you know.... six years ago?" Hermione took a deep breath, as the radio sang on.

__

I was a lonely teenage bronkin buck.... with a pink carnation and a pickup truck... but I knew that I was out of luck... the day... the music... died....

"Those are pretty deep thoughts for a ten-year-old," Hermione crooned, stroking her daughter's brown hair. Nadine sighed.

"I think about it all the time, Mummy."

_And I was singin... bye bye Miss American Pie... drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry... and good ol' boys were drinkin whisky and rye... singing this'll be the day that I die..._

"I think about all of the people that have died, and I think about Christine, and I think about Harry and Draco and I..." she had to stop to catch her breath. Hermione sighed.

"The people who died all died for a good cause, so they all went to Heaven. Christine is there too, probably watching down on us right now. Didn't you know that Harry is working to construct the wizarding world again? He works as the Minister of Magic."

"I know that. I still think about him, though. He looks like he needs thinking about," Nadine insisted. Hermione grinned at her daughter's sense of logic. "But what about Draco? I haven't seen him for six years."

Hermione frowned. It was true. The last time anyone saw Draco was the day of the war, and he disappeared into thin air, so it seemed. There were no traces of Draco Malfoy, Gregory Green, or Amfylo left to be found. He simply vanished. Hermione bit her lip, trying to think of a good answer to her daughters' question. Then the answer came.

"That's actually rather easy. Draco Malfoy lost himself when he was about your age. He's just out there trying to find himself again."

__

Now for ten years we've been on our own,

and moss grows fat on a rolling stone,

but that's not how it used to be...

When the Jester sang for the King and Queen,

in a coat he borrowed from James Dean,

in a voice that came from you and me...

Oh, and while the King was looking down,

the Jester stole his thorny crown...

The courtroom was adjourned,

no verdict was returned...

And while Lenin read a book on Marks,

the quartet practiced in the parks,

and we sang durges in the dark,

the day, the music.... died...

THE END

A/N: Well. I don't care for this chapter much, but eh, it all came together I s'pose. *grins* I think that I am just one big plagiarist! I stole things from the Shining, the Matrix, Bell Prater's Boy, Redwall... stop me when you've heard enough! A chocolate frog to the person that can decode the reason why I put American Pie as the ending quotes! (if I got some of the lyrics wrong, account it to the fact that I got them off a radio by ear...-_-;;) It'll give you something to think about, anyway. See you all later!

~Moxie ^_^

Disclaimer: All of the Harry Potter characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and American Pie belongs to Don McLean. Did I miss anything? 


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